Диана Джонс - A Sudden Wild Magic

“You have surrounded us with woman-haters, Magus dear,” was almost the first thing Lady Marceny said, opening her blue eyes wide and injured in his face. “Why?”

It was the first salvo of the hostilities. He bowed, smiling. “Oh, I don’t think so, my lady. Just an average cross section of the men. You’re simply sensing the pride we here in Arth take in keeping to our Oath.”

“Really? You have made such changes since dear Peter’s time, Magus,” she replied, all honey and perfume and wide, wide eyes.

Thereafter it was assault and battery. Assault of the soul and battery of the mind, the High Head thought, running his hands through his hair. His hair was thinning and caught in strands between his fingers. He rather feared it grew thinner every time he had any dealings with Lady Marceny. There was something peculiarly avid and hungry in her that seemed to draw and suck the life out of you. Though the conditions of Arth tended to prolong a man’s life far beyond the usual, he was sure Lady Marceny would have him old well before even home time. He sighed.

The first complaint on the ladies’ agenda was that there had been so few results from other world. The High Head was naturally ready with figures. He pointed out that a steady stream of innovations was now flowing between otherworld and the Pentarchy, things both technological and magical. Particularly magical, he stressed. Since his predecessor, Magus Peter (under prompting from Lady Marceny’s mother), had so cunningly reseeded the otherworld with the principles of magery, it had responded with a burst of fertility.

The ladies did not deny this. But the Lady Istoly, who was spokeswoman for home affairs, said reproachfully that the dear Magus seemed a little out of touch with the needs of the real world. “While you live peacefully here on Arth, the Pentarchy is in ever greater trouble,” she told him. “I won’t bore you with accounts of the other continents, but you do know — do you? — that at home the Sea of Trenjen has now joined up with Corriarden Bay in the north, making us into an island continent. Unless we can find some way to stop the oceans rising, the Pentarchy as we know it may vanish over the next century or so.”

To which Lady Katny added, in dire, deep tones, “Leathe is beginning to erode.” And Lady Moury spread papers on the table, saying, “I have here an outline of your plan to perform parallel mageworks on the otherworld, to cause waters to rise there by affecting its climate, and thereby elicit a solution to our own flooding. What became of this plan, Magus? Surely we should be getting some results by now?”

In vain did the High Head point out that this was a very large magework indeed; that although the work had been most satisfactorily performed, it took time for something that size to take effect; that they were even now getting preliminary results—

How much time? the ladies wanted to know.

“At least a decade,” the High Head said firmly. “A fact which you will find stated in the plan, Lady Moury.”

“But Magus dear,” Lady Marceny said, all wide blue eyes again, “from our point of view, a decade is what you have now had. Aren’t you getting any real results at all?”

He had defended himself by explaining such results as there were in detail. True, there was as yet no relevant mageworking, but on the technological front, moves were being charted. He went on to remind them that, just as time passed at different rates on Arth and in the Pentarchy, so it passed at another rate again in otherworld. “And,” he said, “of course, you ladies all know that the relationship between our time and that of otherworld is notoriously capricious — possibly even chaotic. Sometimes five of their minutes pass to five of my months and nearly three of your years. Sometimes they seem to have had decades in half an Arth day. So for all we know, not enough time has passed yet in otherworld for those in charge of mageworks to have come up with any answers.”

“I would have thought that all those observers you employ ought to have established some kind of ratio between our time and theirs by now,” Lady Marceny retaliated. “Are you sure these men are quite competent?”

He bit back his anger and assured her they were. Only the fact that they both served the same Goddess kept him civil. The ladies were under no such restraint. They left him in no doubt that they wanted results and they wanted them now.

And it went on like this. They wanted him to do this, or that. He tried to make it plain that although his function was to serve the Pentarchy, this did not make him their servant (thank the Goddess!), and that he was only answerable to the king. But they were used to having menservants and blandly ignored the king. And Lady Marceny set continual traps for him. Over and over again she wondered aloud whether Observer Horn was quite efficient. Was it worth trying another system? Was any system that had to straddle two universes likely to be foolproof?

Each time he restrained his anger and assured her that Arth’s method had stood the test of centuries now. If he opened himself to rage, he knew she would have him. He felt her all the time nudging at his wards, greedily waiting for him to lose control. So he did not lose his temper, much as he felt like screaming — and he could cheerfully have flung her several universes off, or even down to hellband, when, during the best dinner that Arth could provide, she went back to the subject of observers yet again.

“I only ask,” she said, leaning sweetly toward him across the table, “because I’ve been trying a new method of observation for quite a while now, and I seem to have met with a hitch. This makes me sure that you must have your troubles too. In my case, it’s maddening. Just as I was sure there was something firm to observe, the connection seems to have been lost. I must confess that I came to Arth hoping I could reestablish it, but I’m still getting nothing.”

The High Head knew she had her own observatories, but it was unlike her to be so frank about it. Why, I believe she really is in earnest! he thought. “This happens,” he said. “I confess to hitches in my time too.”

“I hoped,” she said, “that you might be able to advise me of some method that did not have so many problems.”

“Willingly, my lady,” he said. “Suppose you tell me something about your new method and how the hitch develops, and I will see what Arth can provide that might help you.”

But of course, she would not tell him. She talked for the next half hour without saying one thing to the purpose, and he realized that this was just another attempt to get him off his guard.

Really, he thought, stretching in his chair, he had let her bother him badly, if he found himself reliving the ladies’ visit like this! Arth discipline enjoined you to banish this kind of obsessive stuff with a short meditation followed by a short specific weave. But he was simply not in the mood. The most he could do was to utter his devout thanks to the workings of the Cosmic Wheel, which had placed him in Arth rather than left him on the estate of Lady Istoly, where he had been born. If you were born a man in Leathe, you joined the Company of Arth and hoped passionately that you would eventually be received into the Brotherhood. Otherwise your life was miserable. And he had been lucky, one of the fortunate tenth who passed all the tests, and luckier still to rise to High Head of the citadel.

Which reminds me, he thought. I have responsibilities. Better get on with the work those harridans interrupted.

He swung around and gestured at his wall. It responded by becoming a rank of mirrors, most of them apparently reflecting blue-clothed mages peacefully at work, though about a third had this reflection covered by a pulsing sigil. The High Head smiled as he collected these pulsing ones into the main reflector before his desk and gestured at them to elucidate themselves. This was a very useful adaptation of an idea from otherworld. Research Horn was still working to discover what otherworlders actually used it for.