“Philo,” Josh said, sliding awkwardly downward, “put a whole heap more protection round us — quick. They’re doing some kind of strong location magework on us.”
Philo’s hoarse breathing slowed down and he whimpered slightly with some kind of effort that Zillah could not detect. But she detected the result almost at once. In the same soft, yearning way that Philo liked to wrap his arms around her, something seemed to wrap all four of them in. The dark and narrow ramp went suddenly safe. They crept downward in a calm stronghold, pillowed by something intangible and rather sweet.
Marcus felt it and immediately became very jolly. “Dart,” he remarked loudly. “Diting. Ort go dlidder-dlidder.”
“Hush, love,” Zillah said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Josh panted. “Philo’s good at this — in short bursts. They’ve lost us completely again.”
Zillah wondered how Josh knew. The result, for her, of whatever Philo was doing was that she lost even the faintest sounds from the pursuers. It was like having her head wrapped in a bolster. They slid slowly downward into what seemed a wormhole that grew darker with every step, and warm and wet. All she could hear was Philo’s breathing and the somewhat frantic scraping and backpedaling of Josh’s hooves.
They rounded yet another corner, and Josh did not go on.
“Dop!” Marcus announced.
“What’s the matter?” Philo asked.
“I don’t know,” said Josh from below. “There doesn’t seem to be anywhere to go to.”
Zillah found this hard to believe. No one would carve a ramp out of stone that led nowhere. The path she could see in her mind lay clearly onward down there, below Josh’s braced hooves. Perhaps it was too narrow for a centaur. Then they were stuck. She unwound Philo’s hand from hers, put her back against the rough and curving wall, and pushed past Josh. Dark as it was, she could feel that the passage continued to spiral down beyond him, and it was no narrower than before.
“See?” said Josh. She could feel the panic behind his voice. He would have to back himself upward, and he was not sure he could. “We’re stuck!”
“Nonsense!” said Zillah. In a surge of irritation at Josh’s pointless panic, she snatched the hand he had braced against the wall and hauled him forward. He came with a startled trampling.
“Hey!” Philo called from above, panicking too. In his distress, he lost his hold on whatever was wrapping them in, and the dark wormhole instantly became a noisy, sinister little trap, filled with echoes, scufflings, the trickle of water, and the roaring of an unfelt wind.
Zillah found herself suddenly terrified, and furious with the pair of them. They were being such wimps! “Hang on to his tail, you fool!” she screamed at Philo, and “Come on!” at Josh. She heaved angrily on his hand. Power rose at her need, and wrapped her round.
In another trampling rush, during which the unfelt wind rose to become the roaring of a gale, the three of them staggered on down and were then, abruptly and briefly, weightless in a vortex, which caught them, whirled them, and then, with shocking suddenness, shot them forth into blazing light.
VIII Earth
1
There was a way, Maureen thought. Her eyes were closing, and pricking from the smoke with which Joe was filling the flat. She could turn her own tiredness to her advantage—use it, in fact — if only she could get Joe off guard. Then she could sleep as long as she liked. She promised herself sleep, held it out as a reward to herself for doing just this last extra piece of hard work. The trouble was, it was mental work. Even wide-awake, that was the kind Maureen was least adjusted to.
She rubbed her eyes to stop the pricking. Held out the reward. Sleep. Carrot to donkey. “I can’t think why you do this dirty work,” she told Joe.
He stopped in the act of stubbing his latest cigarette into the loaded ashtray. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I can’t think how they induced you to come here and spy. You’ve told me how you hate it. And I know nothing would induce me to go to your place and pretend to be something I’m not.”
He looked at her suspiciously, but she had put just the right amount of contempt and boredom into her voice. He laughed. “You’d do it, all right, if you had no choice. They made sure I had no choice, didn’t they?”
“How could they?” Maureen wondered. Her manner suggested he had to be lying. “You’re at least as powerful a magician as I am — and you know I’m not one to be caught easily. You had your work cut out to set this up, and I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t been tired to death.” She pretended to think. “You mean they caught you when you were tired too?”
“Of course not,” said Joe. “They caught me with a woman.”
She laughed, lightly and incredulously, and admired herself for how well she did it. “Cloak and dagger! Incriminating photos! I don’t believe it!” God, this was hard work!
“That’s not how they do things on Arth,” Joe said, with equal contempt. “Mind you, it was a put-up job, I’m sure of that now. There were these two girls who came over with the embassy from Leathe. Antorin and I were both fresh from Oath — you won’t know what that means, but you can take it from me you feel — well, caught — boxed up before you’ve had a chance to look around — and we were the two who were told off to guide the party. And I still don’t know how they worked it, but it wasn’t long before there was only these two and us two. Fresh young things. Both swore they were scared to hellspoke of all the mageworkings going on in Leathe and said they hardly knew any magecraft themselves. We believed them. We were fools, but Oath takes you that way. You realise it’s too late and you wish you’d stayed quietly at home in the Pentarchy.”
He was distracted. Behind him, on the arm of the sofa, the half-extinguished stub end smoked in the ashtray, a thin, irritating wisp.
Maureen kept her eyes on it. Concentrated on it as an annoyance. I wish he’d put it out properly! It kept her awake. It also kept a trivial idea at the front of her mind in case he started to notice what she was doing. Very slowly, she started to edge her mind forward to his. “Oath? What Oath?”
“You swear celibacy. It makes sex illegal,” he said irritably. His eyes were fixed on misery a universe away. “I see now I was never cut out for it. I fell for that girl — I was like a rutting bull — well, you know how I get — and I swear to the Goddess I’ll never forget until I die the way they all came bursting in, her Lady, my High Brother — loads of people — and the High Head walking through the lot of them. You feel a right fool. You want to be sick. And of course my sweet little girl who doesn’t know any magecraft obliges them all by holding me helpless just as I am. If I ever get back, I’ll find her and I think I’ll kill her.”
Maureen’s mind continued to stalk forward, softly as a cat. “And what happened?” she said, still with her eyes irritably on that rising trickle of smoke.
“Trial,” he said. “Dragged in and both told we’d earned the death penalty. That was true. Then the High Head visits me in the death cell — I never heard what happened to Antorin, maybe they killed him — and he tells me I could commute my death sentence to exile, by coming here and serving the Brotherhood another way — the way I seemed to be good at, he points out — if I wanted.” He laughed, staring into the distance. Maureen crept on. Sleep soon. Soon now. “You know, I was disgusted! I refused. I said I’d broken Oath and I’d rather die. Would you believe that! So he went away. Then he came back and said if I behaved well and got him the information he wanted, Arth wanted, then I’d be allowed to come back — he’d reinstate me in the Brotherhood.”