“I’m showing them the way we cook in my world,” Helen said. Her composure was wholly unruffled by her instant recognition that Brother Milo was going to prove her chief difficulty. “It seems to have ended up as cooking supper. I hope you don’t mind.”
Brother Milo did mind, but he could hardly throw good food away and start again at this hour.
8
“What I want to know,” said Sandra, “is why you’re all being so polite to me!”
High Brother Gamon bowed yet again. “We think of you as Azandi, ma’am,” he explained. “Azandi is the other continent of our home world. The people there look like you. They inspire respect.”
“Whatever for?” said Sandra.
“They are,” Brother Gamon told her ruefully, “somewhat dangerous adepts, even the least of them.”
Sandra began and then bit back — just barely — an angry description of the status of black women on Earth. This was a mission, for God’s sake! It might still be possible to do what they had come to do, and she had not been chosen for stupidity. “Explain. I think it might be a bit like that where I come from.”
“Azandi specialize in types of mageworkings that we have never succeeded in mastering,” the man in the horned headdress explained. “They can handle the hidden side of the Wheel. This naturally makes them, in addition to other things, experts in divination. Since we in Calculus, in our laborious way, work at divination too, this is bound to make us treat someone of your appearance most respectfully.”
“Oh,” said Sandra. “Ah.”
“Though I hasten to add that we pride ourselves on treating all ladies with respect,” Brother Gamon added.
What a windbag! Sandra thought. “Okay. So what do you want to do with me?”
“We’re about to try various techniques to discover the whereabouts of your homeworld and how soon you may safely be conveyed back there. There is no need to feel the least alarm, ma’am. A full birth horoscope is, of course, impossible at first, but we are drawing up one for the exact moment of your arrival in Arth. And we shall scry in various ways, based on information Observer Horn imparts — we shall need your age in years, months, and days for all this, a hair of your head, your hand on one or two implements of calculation, and we should like you to cut the cards for our readings of—”
At last the man had got to something Sandra knew about. “Cards? You mean tarot?”
“What is that?” he asked. “Atala is our usual system, but we also use—”
“Show,” Sandra said imperiously. “Cards.”
He led her to a velvet-covered table. Sandra swaggered after him, acting what she hoped was an arrogant Azandi as hard as she knew how. I have power. I work the hidden side of the Wheel. I am arrogant. Bloody hell, I feel like Roz! She looked haughtily down her nose as Brother Gamon spread a pack of cards on the velvet with an expert sweep of his palm. Hm. Quite like tarot really. The old, really weird decks. Sandra picked up what seemed to be the Magician. “What do you call this?”
“The Archmage. That is a most potent and revealing card, which—”
“Piffle. Weak and ordinary — but then he’s only one of the unnumbered trumps: all those count low.” Sandra sensed gasps from all over the great room. “Honest. Does he count high with you then? He counts low with me, where I come from. It seems to me you ought to read me the way it goes in my country, or you’ll get it all wrong. Want me to show you my way?”
There was a long murmur of assent. Mages left what they were doing and drew in around the velvet table. Sandra kept as sober as a judge, but inside she was doing her grin-and-hug-yourself-Sandra. She loved fooling people. Here we go then. Back-to-front tarot. This should mess them up some. After that I’ll have a go at upside-down horoscopes. I’ll never get a better chance at sabotage, not if I look all over this mad blue building for a month!
9
Flan had wandered into a tine of Ritual Horn. But I’m still not sure how we got from there to here! she thought as she swung and bent and sidestepped in front of a grave, dark young mage, who most faithfully echoed what Flan did. Except he’s so good-looking. Perhaps that had something to do with it.
“From the waist, now! That’s better!” she told the young mage. Dip arm, dip arm and up. As far as Flan could recall, she had happened on this dance room, with its smooth blue floor and full-length mirrors on two walls, to find a Brother Instructor attempting to put a team of mages through some kind of movement routine. Swing around and swing. What the purpose of the routine was, Flan still had no idea, but she had hung around at the door fascinated at first, then disapproving, then exasperated. Most of them were so bad at movement. The Instructor didn’t seem to have much of a clue either.
“You in the second row — red hair — you’re still missing the beat! One and two and, one and two and! That’s better!” Somehow, with her total exasperation, the professional had arisen in Flan and taken over completely. She remembered herself suddenly in the middle of the room, clapping for attention. Music came jangling to a startled halt, faces had turned, gaping. “That was awful, people, just awful!” Flan had found herself telling them, in the full, carrying voice of a dance teacher. “You can all do much better than that. I’ll show you. Let me just get these shoes off my feet...” And then she had shown them how and worked them and worked with them. Faces by now shone with sweat. The Brother Instructor’s face was twisted and gasping. Honest! He should be fitter than that. He didn’t know what work was! Tomorrow she was going to take them all back to basics, but now it was probably time for a little simple yoga.
“All right, people. You can rest. You have the makings of a good dancer,” she told her handsome mage. His grave face lit with a besotted smile. She knew that if she’d asked him to lick her toes, he would have lain down on the floor and done so.
But Brother Instructor was bustling up to Flan, limping a little and very angry. “My good woman, it is not our purpose here to dance. This is a Ritual of the Goddess.”
“Then you should dance,” Flan told him. “She likes it. Anyway, dancing is the basis of all good movement, whatever you think She wants. All right, people, if you’ve got your breath, we’ll have a little yoga now.”
10
As two dozen mages tried to force their unaccustomed legs into lotus position, the High Head received an urgent summons from Edward.
“Couldn’t it wait until I met you at supper?” he asked as he arrived in Healing Horn. One of the women, the blond hysterical one, was lying on the outermost bunk, pale and comatose. Though the High Head was sure she was unconscious, her presence made him uncomfortable. He was not used to the outline of breasts on a sleeper under a blanket.
“No, it couldn’t be then,” Edward said, in his most apologetic way. “It had to be here.” He was hovering beside a more distant bunk that reeked of stasis mage-work, and he seemed to be concealing something in one hand. “She’s in healing trance,” he said, seeing the High Head’s attention on the woman. “I didn’t realize how upset she was when her friend died. My fault. But I think I’ve discovered the reason for those deaths now. Will you come over here?”