Диана Джонс - A Sudden Wild Magic

“My Len had a weak stomach,” Gladys murmured back, “and I daresay he’s just the same. Analogues, you know. Len used to live mostly on potatoes.”

The ex-High Head heard her and looked at her with hatred.

Shortly the king looked at his gold fob watch. “We leave for the Royal Grove in five minutes. Both of you must visit a bathroom before then.”

“I, Your Majesty?” said the High Head. “There is surely no need for me to go to Leathe?”

Gladys did not hear the king’s reply, for a polite young woman arrived just then and led her away to a washroom with decidedly peculiar plumbing. Gladys wrestled with it, thinking that His Majesty was being rather hard on poor old Lawrence. The man’s only fault was to be the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. This mess, after all, went back long before he was born.

She came back to find the High Head dismally resigned. He sat silent in the car that drove them to the Royal Grove. Even Gladys did not guess that the thought of setting foot in Leathe again made the passet churn in his stomach. All he said was, to the king, when they were joined in the dim light under the great trees by seven soberly dressed men who all had the look of mages, “Your Majesty, I hope one of us is familiar with Lady Marceny’s grove. It is usually important to—”

“No, Magus, but we have other reliable facts,” one of the soberly dressed men told him, and he spoke with as much respect as if the one he addressed were still, in fact, High Head of Arth. “We arrive exactly at sunset in that time zone. The grove is of orange trees, and there is a centaur in it.”

His facts were a little out. There were upward of a hundred centaurs in it, all milling about, shouting in deep bass voices. Gladys hurriedly picked Jimbo up, wondering if they had come to the wrong grove. The king’s party was jostled every which way. But hardly had they realized this when one of the centaurs shouted, “Oh, all right then! Let’s all go!” And the whole crowd of huge bodies went thundering away out of the grove.

“Follow them,” said the king. “Quickly.”

The journey was exasperating for Tod. He insisted on driving his car, which meant he had to keep to the roads, while the centaurs spread out across country. He and Paul had both been offered a ride on a centaur, but Tod bore in mind that they might have to make a swift and scattered retreat and that Josh would be exhausted. He folded the roof of the car back, which just gave room to cram someone Josh’s size into the rear seat, and drove with the warm wind in his hair and Paul sitting solidly beside him.No one had a reliable map of the Listanian estate — no doubt Marceny took care there were none. The centaurs tended to get lost at first, until it dawned on their unorganized minds that Tod was able to home on Josh. His birthright led him to be conscious of Philo, Zillah and Marcus too, though Tod did not tell them that. Once he had explained he knew where to go, the centaurs spread out in the lands on either side of the road, and Tod tended to leave them behind on the straights. Where the road bent, the centaurs cut the corners, and he nearly ran one down. In addition, he had not the slightest idea what kind of conversation to make with Paul. They exchanged stilted monosyllables until — Tod supposed it should not have surprised him — Michael suddenly bobbed up in the back, saying, “Hellspoke, Tod! Paul’s a perfectly reasonable human being!”

Paul gave a great shout of laughter, and Tod jumped half out of his skin.

“Oh, Great Centaur, you fool gubbins!” Tod said disgustedly. “And you timed that perfectly, didn’t you? There’s no way I can turn back now, or even kick you out!”

Taking everything together, he thought it quite surprising he only drove down one road that dead-ended.

Sunset came and grew and flared on the meticulous drainage ditches. The land here was as flat as Michael’s barony, though ten times tidier, and well before they reached the place, Tod could see both the grove and Marceny’s mansion as a small clump and a black blot against the sky. The nearer he came, the more certain he was that he was faced with a choice. Josh was still in the grove, all right, but there was worse trouble at the mansion.

In the end the choice was made for him. The road did not go to the grove, but swept around to the left to lead to the mansion. “Michael,” Tod said, hurriedly drawing up, “go and make sure they get Josh out of that grove and back to Riverwell. Stay near a road, and I’ll try to pick you up on my way back. I’ll take Paul to the mansion, if that’s all right with you, Paul?”

“Fine,” said Paul. “Take care, Michael.”

Michael leaped out and ran, splashing through a dyke in a storm of spray, to accost the nearest centaur. Tod swung the car around and roared off toward the mansion, which seemed to be dark, except for a curious flickering among the trees at the back.

Paul said, “There’s something over there with more power than I think I can handle.”

“Now, why do I get that feeling too?” Tod said. He stopped with a shriek at the unlighted front of the house and ran up the steps and in through its open door, brushing aside heavy wardings and strong blocks to right and left like so many cobwebs.

There was more power than Zillah knew how to handle. She felt heavy with it, dead. As Marceny set off down the steps to the lawn, with her train of red velvet softly brush-brushing the stone, and Herrel followed carrying Marcus, the women around Zillah moved too. She was forced — by nothing she could see — to walk in their midst. The power was so great that she had to wade rather than walk.And I might as well be dead anyway with Herrel on two sides at once, she thought, glancing at the girls around her. Pretty, pretty little faces. Don’t any of them care? They seemed to be able to walk perfectly well, although the one on her right in the peacock silk was mincing rather. Zillah glanced contemptuously at the little witch. Glanced again. And her heart knocked, heavily, against the stifling load of power. The girl was dark, with dark eyelashes demurely spread on the cheeks of her pretty little face. Her small hands delicately held up her silken dress as she approached the steps. But she was Philo. No one could have been less like Philo, particularly with those tiny hands and — yes — dainty little feet tripping down the dim stone steps, but Zillah knew it was. There was an essence of him that she could sense, scared, small, very angry, and most definitely Philo inside the disguise. She hoped he would look at her— wink — show in some way he was there and still her friend, but he gave no sign. Perhaps his anger was at Zillah for getting him into this, or maybe he needed all his attention on maintaining the illusion. Zillah feared it was the former.

As they went out onto the lawn among the carefully spaced stands of fire, there was singing. Zillah thought at first that it came from the numbers of dimly seen people gathered at the edges of the turf— presumably people from the estate or workers from the house — but she was soon sure that it did not. It was heavy singing, in one rich but untrained voice. Its tune dragged from one powerful, slumberous phrase to another, bringing sleep with it, numbness, submission, and probably death. Yes, a deathsong, Zillah thought. It came from the source of the heavy power that made it so hard to move. The lawn was a tank, full of it like a heavy liquid.

Marceny took up her position beside the stone table, right in the center, and Zillah instantly knew that the song and the power came from Marceny, even though she had not uttered a sound. Knowing that killed a slight hope. Herrel had said Marceny was currently busy punishing Mark;but any hope that this might drain her strength or concentration went at the sight of Marceny’s closed lips and still face. Zillah could even feel, as a sort of dim strand, the power being diverted toward Mark, and it made no difference to speak of to the strength singing here.