Диана Джонс - A Sudden Wild Magic

“I know, Paulie. But whoever sent it has harnessed wild magic. Part of the strength is the wild magic objecting. I can’t stop it, and I don’t think any of us dare go out, even if it is only after Mark.”

Gladys’s house, but most oddly empty of its owner. Amanda was there, standing by the hearth, and Mark was a little aside, staring at the potted trees. He looked pale even for him. Zillah took the wild magic prowling around the house, united it to her own fourfold power, and promised it freedom shortly.

“Mark,” she said. “Come with me quickly. I need you back with Herrel.”

Amanda straightened. “The sending’s gone! I— Zillah! Zillah, what do you want?”

“I’ve come for Mark,” she said. “He has to go back. It’s necessary.”

The frown Zillah knew so well collected above Amanda’s nose. “Why is that?”

She might have known, Zillah thought, that things would not be easy with Amanda in it. Mark was now somehow on the other side of Amanda, looking puzzled. “Mark,” Zillah explained, “is half of another man from another universe.”

“We know,” Amanda said, and turned to speak to another presence whom Zillah could only dimly discern. “Yes, but be quiet, Paulie. It’s Zillah. She wants Mark.” At this, the other presence seemed to raise an outcry, but Amanda turned impatiently back to Zillah. “Zillah, are you in this other world?”

“Yes, and in terrible trouble. That’s why we need Mark.”

Amanda raised her head and became more than herself. “Zillah, this man is badly flawed. For one thing, he’s been spying on us.”

“Not intentionally, or voluntarily,” Zillah said.

“There are other flaws,” Amanda answered. “Do you really want him?”

“The other half is even worse,” Zillah protested. “I love him both. Amanda, he must come, or I’ll die, Marcus will be enslaved, and Mark will probably die, too, when Herrel’s killed. Please.”

Amanda’s head was still raised. She said, with unearthly sadness, “Zillah, I’m sorry, but taking Mark makes a terrible imbalance. You could destroy two worlds.”“Then I’ll balance!” Zillah cried out. “You help. Wait a second.”

The next second, or maybe at the same time, she had taken wing on the fourfold wild magic — some of which protested and was soothed — and was in the presence of Amanda again, only with a difference. This Amanda walked through a strange room with painted panels, and her hands were nervously clasped to her mouth.

“I tell you I can’t see at this juncture,” she said to someone out of sight. “It could go any way. How I wish I hadn’t let them all go off! Or I should have gone too. What a hellbound coward I am!”

Amanda should always grow her hair that long, Zillah thought admiringly. It looked beautiful. “Amanda!”

The woman jumped and turned. “You need help?”

“Badly. Take on your Aspect and balance. Balance for your life! Here.” Zillah tossed the woman she hardly knew what — a thread, or a spark, or a skein — and to her relief and gratitude, the woman made dismissing motions to the person she had been talking to and seized what Zillah threw in competent hands.

“A moment,” Zillah heard her say. “I’m summoned as Priestess.”

She was back with her sister, flinging her another version of the thread or spark. “Balance.” This Amanda, not so used to balancing, needed Zillah’s attention more. Zillah hung between the two, holding, helping, while energy poured and thundered. It dinned around her, fell in avalanches and slid like lava, smoking and roaring. The wild magic of the sending fled shrieking upon it and was gone. Clouds scudded like boulders. When it stopped, it seemed too soon, but Zillah was spent. She hung in front of her sister, knowing she was only there on energies Josh and Philo and Tod were lending her to use.

“Amanda, let me have Mark now. Please. I’ve done all I could.”

“I know.” Amanda was holding on to the mantelpiece with one hand. She looked exhausted. She waved the other hand wearily at Mark. “You have to ask him, Zillah. He’s not a pawn.”

“Mark,” she said faintly. “Come home with me? Please?”

Mark seemed to see her for the first time. “Zillah? You want me?”

The look on his face set the other presence squalling again.

“… about the insurance?” Zillah heard. “All those bills and our mortgage.”

“Always,” she said, holding out her arms through the noise.

He walked into her arms gladly.

“I don’t get on with all this transposing, or whatever they call it,” Gladys grumbled to Jimbo. They had no sooner arrived in the grove and seen all the great rumps of those centaurs rushing away than they were somehow ahead of them, on a lawn lit by a set of barbecues and standing beside another centaur. This one was smaller and whiter, as far as she could see. She could hear the High Head muttering something about how little light there was.

The king’s seven mages appeared to agree. They all raised light— something she would have given her toes to be able to do — great pearly blue globes of it between each man’s hands. Then she realized they had arrived in one of those utter stillnesses which meant the working of magic was in progress. What she saw, the female in bloodred, the child on the table, and the knife, nearly caused her to rush forward and interrupt. But the king raised a warning hand, and she saw it was a different stillness.

It was over in that instant. A girl — Zillah — sagged onto the end of the table. The small white centaur started forward, and so did two other people from the terrace-thing at the back. The red woman seemed about to bring the knife down, but the man dressed like a jester calmly leaned over and took the child off the table.

“Not this time,” he said. “Not him too.” The red woman stared and then screeched, “Herre!!” The jester-man turned away. “Give me his clothes, Aliky. He’s freezing.”

At this moment Jimbo vanished from Gladys’s arms. She cried out, “Jimbo!” and cried out again when she saw him briefly on the table where the child had been. He loomed like a mad spider in the queer light, and the shadows gave him far too many arms. In another jolt of movement, he was on the red woman. His voice beat and howled through her head, “WRONG GREED! FOUL EATER! GREED!” with such force that Gladys nearly fell over, although she knew Jimbo was not shouting at her. She saved herself on the flank of the white centaur and stared at him attacking the woman. She had never known Jimbo do such a thing before.

The woman screamed. It looked as if she hid her face in her arms. Then she grew other arms and flailed at the ether monkey. An instant later it was clear that there was another thing, many-armed like Jimbo, emerging from the woman’s substance to fight back. There was, for another instant, a scrawl of flailing limbs and a hideous low howling, before the fabric of that world seemed to become too flimsy for the creatures, and for the woman too. Everything elongated around them, blurred and stretched, so that the tearing and howling was going on in a deepening pit composed of lawn, table, house, terrace — until it tore under the strain and snapped back, leaving a vibrating bare space.

Wrapped together in the nightmare bodiless intimacy of the sepia space, Joe-Maureen looked up and screamed. A fighting tangle of glossy black limbs, with something fraying and shredding among them, plunged toward them, filling the whorls with senseless howlings. He-she struggled aside, threw herself askew, and then threw himself backward. The tangle plunged wailing past, barely missing them, and vanished on downward, spraying them as it went with hot acid redness, that lashed them agonizingly with salt.