This was not lost on the High Head. The veiling of that entry was designed to give him sight of such things. But he was mostly taken up with exasperation. “When I said I would see the child, I meant the child on its own — er — Lady Green.”
“I think I’d better stay with him,” Zillah answered diffidently. “He’s a bit difficult when he’s upset like this.” In her arms, Marcus turned wide, accusing eyes on the High Head and was shaken with a huge gasp of a sob.
It was, the High Head recognized, primitive magic he was up against, the bonding between a mother and a small child. It was something he had only read about up to now, and he was astonished at its strength. Zillah, for all her apologetic manner, was immovable. It had nothing to do with her own magic gifts. He had Edward’s report to show him these were strong indeed. According to Edward, this woman had actually adapted young Gordano’s birthright for her own use and held Edward pinned to her desire. These were not gifts you meddled with lightly. He sighed and gave in.
“Little boy, what is your name?”
Marcus looked up under his mother’s chin, a stormy blue glare, and gave another body-shaking sob. “Barker.”
Odd name. “And where do you live?” asked the High Head.
“Idanda how,” said Marcus. “Dilly bool.” He turned his face away.
“And how did you travel here?” persisted the High Head, with a strong sense of getting nowhere.
“Bud,” said Marcus, with his face pressed into Zillah’s shoulder. “Jidey bud. Didden lie bub. Go bub. Doe lie did how. Wan hoe, wan hoe, wan hoe, Dillah! Wan gorblay, wan bregia, wan barberday, wan doad!” By this time he was bawling desolately again. “Dillah, I need DOAD!”
“There, there, honey,” Zillah said, rocking him.
There was a sort of helpless concern to her rocking the boy, and a meekness before fate — the High Head had read this described — but he nevertheless discerned that her meekness was a blind. The wretched woman knew he could not make head or tail of the infant. She was trying not to laugh.
“What is wrong with him?” he said, giving in again. “Why is he crying?”
Zillah swallowed. She was rather good at concealing her frequent unseemly need to laugh, and she was fairly sure this High Horns had not noticed. “He’s hungry,” she explained. “He was frightened in the capsule, and this place is strange, and he doesn’t like the food we were given.” She added, in her usual placatory way, “I’m afraid.”
The High Head saw a way to break this partnership without a clash of mageworks. “In that case we must find him something to eat. If I get someone in from Kitchen, would the child consent to go there while I ask you a few questions?” It was not the way around he wanted things, but the other way was hopeless.
“I think — well, he might,” Zillah conceded.
“Good.” The High Head gestured, crisply and precisely. Marcus took his head out of Zillah’s shoulder and gazed with tear-filled but interested eyes at the sigil of Housekeeping forming in the air, then dissolving to that of Kitchen, but he hid his face convulsively again when the sigil gave way to the flesh-and-blood figure of Brother Milo, with a list of stores in his hand.
The High Head explained. Brother Milo nodded and seemed rather relieved that this was all the High Head wanted of him. He held out his free hand to Marcus. “Coming with me, sonny? Come with Brother Milo and we’ll find something to eat.”
It was not as simple as that. The High Head contained his exasperation while Marcus hid his face again and Zillah placed him on the floor and then knelt down to explain that the kind man would find Marcus some toast, and that Mum would stay here for just a bit, and Marcus would be happy with the kind man. Then there was further delay while Marcus turned and examined Brother Milo, with his thinning hair and wiry body, and while he made up his mind that maybe he rather liked the way Brother Milo’s face hung in nervous folds like brackets around his mouth. Finally, with some condescension, Marcus held out his hand for Brother Milo to take and trustingly vanished with him.
Zillah gave a little sigh. It was not relief. She hoped High Horns did not realize how much she had spun all this out. She was dreading this interview. No one had told her what she was supposed to say.
Luckily, the High Head was too inexperienced in the ways of children — as far as he knew, Marcus was the only child ever to visit Arth — to do more than conclude that Zillah was an overprotective mother. She was bound to be, he thought irritably. Love beamed from her aura. Here he realized, with something of a jolt, that Zillah was the one whom the Goddess had been most concerned to protect in that madly plunging capsule. He looked at her in this light, wonderingly but warily. She was, he had to admit, very comely — not in the highly wrought cosmetic fashion of the Ladies he was used to, but in a direct, untreated way which, again he had to admit it, spoke directly to the austerities of his soul and no doubt pleased the Goddess too. But she was also tiresomely humble and probably very devious. He told her curtly to sit down.
“Tell me the reason for your journey in that capsule.”
“It — it was on the way to the Highland Games,” said Zillah. This at least she knew to say.
“But you were not taking part in those games yourself,” guessed the High Head.
“That’s right.” Zillah found she had agreed before she was aware. Panic. She sat twisting her hands between the knees of her jeans and wondered what the hell to say she had been doing. Inspiration flushed through her — thank the Lord! “But it was a charter flight, you know, and Marcus and I got the two spare tickets at the last moment because I — er — had to get away.”
The High Head watched the power rise around her to answer his suspicions and was not surprised that the Goddess had singled this one out. This woman was important. He began to suspect that whatever business the occupants of the rogue capsule had been on, it concerned Zillah and her child somehow. Maybe they were her bodyguard. Yes, that might fit. Roz would lie to protect her. Well, that was no concern of his, so long as it did not threaten Arth. But he needed to be sure.
“Had to get away?” he asked, using the time-honored technique of simply throwing the remark back.
“Oh — yes,” Zillah invented. “The courts had given me custody of Marcus, but his father wants him. He was threatening to kidnap Marcus, so I had to get away quickly to somewhere where he wouldn’t find us.”
“Where is that somewhere?” the High Head inevitably asked.
Zillah wished she could remember whether Roz had named a place. “Lyonesse,” she said desperately. “Near where they hold the Highland Games.” And, striving for local color, she added, “Logres is near there too, just down the road from Camelot. Marcus’s father wouldn’t dream I’d gone there. Camelot’s politically unsound.”
“And Marcus’s father is who?” came the next question.
Oh my God! Zillah thought. “Someone very important — whose name I’m not at liberty to reveal.” Which, she thought, was not so far from the truth.
A ring of truth there, thought the High Head. “Where—”
Brother Milo rematerialized in the middle of the room, still holding Marcus by the hand. Saved by the bell! thought Zillah. Tears were rolling dolefully down Marcus’s cheeks. “What is it, Marcus?”