Диана Джонс - A Sudden Wild Magic

Herrel said all this in a light, laughing manner and seemed to be addressing most of it to Marcus. Zillah tried to meet his eyes, but it proved almost impossible. He looked mostly at the top of Marcus’s head.

“He told me — Ph — Amphetron — that he had no kind of gifts at all,” she said. “His family think he’s a runt.” It seemed hard on Philo to devalue him like this, but it was the only help she could give him. If Marceny thought he was worthless and the search relaxed, Philo might just get away. She wished she could think of a way to help Josh. “They wouldn’t really want him for stud, would they?”

“He’s gualdian, runt or not,” Herrel said lightly. “We always want gualdians for stud, and they always try to run. They seem to think it’s a dishonor. Funny state of mind. Those that get away afterward seem to consider themselves outcasts and never go near other gualdians, so I’m told. And the ones that don’t get away always kill themselves.”

“No!” said Zillah.

“Oh yes,” said Herrel. “I was there when my father cut his throat.” Here he did look at Zillah. His face creased into a carefree smile, but behind it she sensed another face — a face not Mark’s but truly Herrel’s, and quite unlike the bearded jester smiling at her — and this face was screaming. It only had access to Herrel’s eyes. Those eyes implored her. “I was only about this fellow’s age,” Herrel added, giving Marcus a little shake. “Zillah, why did you come ?”

She wanted to take him in her arms along with Marcus and tell him that it was all right, the agony was over now. But he was facing her across the silly hut, too far away to reach. “I told you,” she said, and managed to enfold him anyhow, in some way not physical, but powerful and sure, in an enwrapping essence of herself from across the hut. “I had to come. I was on Arth and I saw you in a sort of mirror, talking to High Horns.”

“Arth?” he said. “Why Arth? You were safe where you were! You’d left me — Mark — him. I was even glad in a way. I tried to be grateful.”

“Grateful!” she said. “It was so horrible, I left Earth!”

“Yes, but you set me — him — free by leaving, you know. I don’t know how it was — maybe it was the effort I had to put in before that to make sure my mother didn’t know about you — but the moment you were gone, he was practically a free agent. And I thought he might at least repair a bit of the mess over there in your world, and turned him loose with instructions to let otherworld know the way it was being exploited. She’s just found out what he’s done. She’s hard at work trying to punish him at the moment. That’s why I’m here. Zillah, why did you leave me — him?”

His face still smiled at her, but she ignored it and spoke to the face behind. “He — Mark — was so shallow somehow — it was alarming. Then one night I had a kind of vision of him — you — down a deep well with a woman feeding off you. I thought it was Paulie, but it wasn’t, of course. And I was pregnant and there seemed nothing else I could do. I knew it was hopeless. It — it was very horrible for me too. You — he — didn’t even try to find me.”

“We knew better than that,” he said jokingly. “You were safer away from him. But if I’d known about — What’s this fellow’s name?”

“Marcus.”

“Barker,” Marcus agreed sleepily.

“Marcus, I’d have warned you never to go near us — him.” The smile left Herrel’s face at last. “Zillah, you realize that if she finds out who Marcus is, you and I are both dead, don’t you? Now she knows what I— Mark’s done, she’s got very little time for me anyway. A small child of her own flesh and blood is much more malleable.”

“Then she shan’t find out.” Zillah put forth more enfoldings, around Marcus and around Herrel too. “Herrel—”

His head was on one side and he gazed at her. “Goddess!” he said. “The weirdest thing about it is that I’ve barely touched you in my own flesh.”

The stone room was dense with misery.

“Fetch Mark back,” said Zillah. “You need him. Don’t leave him there for her to punish.”

“I told you — I don’t know how. I was out cold all through the ritual.”

She was exasperated. “But you must know! You — it’s instinctive! He’s you !” Herrel was smiling again, hiding his screaming face. Zillah said furiously, “And I bet she used your own strength to cut you in two! She feeds on you all the time. How did you ever let her get that kind of hold on you?”

“I didn’t.” Herrel was entirely back to his light, joking manner. “I was Marcus’s age. There was a ritual — very pretty and impressive — in which I was circumcised and she ate the foreskin.”

“Oh, good God!” Zillah’s anger became blazing disgust. “Why is witchcraft so damn squalid! I think that’s why I’ve never — Look, Herrel, this has to be nonsense. A third of a person’s body cells change every seven years. After more than twenty-one years, she can’t have the remotest hold on you!”

Herrel laughed and jogged Marcus. He seemed hardly to have heard.

“All right,” said Zillah. “If the hold is still there, then you’ve got the same hold over her. Mustn’t that be true?”

“Perhaps Marcus can sort that one out.” Herrel turned merrily away from her. “That do for you, Mother? Full confession from both guilty parties.”

“Yes, thank you, dear. Very nice.” Lady Marceny, dressed now in crimson velvet, approached him along what seemed to be a wide stone terrace. Her train softly dragged over the flagstones behind her. “I heard your part very clearly, Herrel, and I’m quite vexed. But I see you’ve got the child. I may forgive you for that. Bring him along here, dear. The ritual’s all set up.”

Why am I not surprised? Zillah wondered. I’m not even angry. Just numb.

There were women around her, all finely dressed. Their gowns glowed in the orange-ruby light of the sunset filling the sky beyond the trees at the end of the lawn. Was the room where they had been an illusion then? Shame penetrated Zillah’s numbness. She and Marcus must have spent half the day roving about an oblong space on the open terrace. How stupid! But there was no point in thinking about that now. The lawn, about a foot below the terrace, was lit by nine tripods, each holding a blazing fire. There was a low table at their center. On it, knives caught the color of both the sunset and the flames.

“How far is it to Lady Marceny’s estate?” Tod asked his cousin as they hurried back along the causeway. “No distance, as the crow flies,” Michael said. “It’s just across the border, but the estuary’s in the way. Since this flooding, you have to go miles round by the road.”

“I’d no idea it was so near!” Tod said. “I’ve never thought of you living next door to a menace like that.”

“Surely you knew?” Michael said, making great booted strides. “This barony was set up to guard the border. That’s what most of the centaurs do here. Until Paul came, we had to employ a mage as well.”

“Paul? Amanda’s new man? Is he a mage then?”

“Not exactly. He’s from Hallow Isle — off the Leathe coast. The people there all get born with some sort of natural antidote to Leathe. It’s genetic.” Michael, Tod thought, sounded a bit curt about Paul.

He was glad to see his cousin was not a complete saint.

“Is that why your mother married him?”

“No,” Michael almost snapped. “Love. I thought we could leave Paul here while we—”

“No,” Tod said. “I take him. You stay.”