The Ozark trilogy (73 page)

There was no order to it, when it happened—it happened everywhere, all at once, all at the same time. Twelve Castles there were on Ozark, and not one was overlooked or granted a delay. Nine Magicians of Rank as well, spread around over the planet, and they were stricken all together, with a unity that they had known before only on that single occasion when they had joined forces against Responsible of Brightwater.

Veritas Truebreed Motley the 4
^th
was the only Magician of Rank on the continent of Marktwain, and the course of events was so swift that he heard only the first scream from outside the Castle walls before he was literally thrown to the floor with his hands pressed desperately to a head that he was sure would burst ... he could hear nothing more after that but the message exploding there.

The ordinary citizens and the Grannys were spared that penalty; the Magicians felt only a sudden nagging headache, nothing out of the way. For them, unlike the Magicians of Rank, the problem was not what was in their heads but what was in the sky.

Above Castle Brightwater, suspended well out of reach of ordinary weapons but easily within sight of the eye, a giant crystal had appeared, spinning slowly on its point for just a moment before it stopped and hung there motionless above them.

It looked to be one hundred feet from tip to tip, stretching straight up, though it was hard to be sure without knowing exactly what its distance was from any object of reference. And it was in the shape of a flawless diamond, perfect in its symmetry, perfect in its utter transparentness. It would have been invisible, in fact, except that from some angles it acted as a prism and cast huge rainbows over the land and buildings beneath it, turning the countryside to a fairyland of glorious color. It made no sound at all. It came from nowhere and nothing held it in its place, nothing that could be seen. It was beautiful, and mysterious, and wholly terrifying.

The Grannys heard that screaming and ran out onto a balcony to see what the commotion was about
this
time, took one horrified look at the thing, and ran even faster after Veritas Truebreed. By the time they reached him he was aware that similar scenes were taking place at every one of the Twelve Castles, and he wished himself anywhere else in the Universe ... preferably at the bottom of the sea. Any sea.

“Veritas Truebreed Motley,” fussed Granny Gableframe when they found him, “whatever in this world are you doing? A lot of help
you
are, rolling on the floor and carrying on with that carry-on! You have colic or what? Get up and come see what’s arrived this day to brighten the corners where we are ... might could be you could be of some use at last!”

When that didn’t budge him from the niche he had managed to thrash his way into, or bring him out of the position of tight-coiled agony he was twisted into, the Grannys knelt beside him and began an expert probing. He screamed louder, and begged them not to touch him, and if he had not been paralyzed with pain they would not have been able to stop his frenzied efforts to smash his brains out against the stone walls of the Castle.

“Men,” said Gableframe. “Always there when you need them.”

“Veritas?” Granny Hazelbide stood up and poked him with her shoe. “You stop that caterwauling, you hear me? I know you can hear me, don’t you make out you can’t!”

As a matter of actual fact, he could
not
hear her over the din in his head. He could see her mouth moving, and his long experience with Grannys gave him an excellent idea of what the two of them must be saying, but they might as well have been in the next county for all that he was able to hear of their bad-mouthing. There was only
one
sound, and it filled all his perceptions, and it was surely going to be the death of him unless he somehow got help. He had time to wonder, through his agony, how Lincoln Parradyne was faring at Castle Smith, where the “Granny” in residence was only an old woman hired by the Magician of Rank to placate the Family when Granny Gableframe walked out on them to move to Castle Brightwater. Veritas Truebreed had sense enough left to know that nobody but a Granny was likely to be able to help any of them.

One word, Veritas,
he was screaming at himself silently, trying to get through the unbearable waves of noise,
you’ve got to say one word! Only one word!

Granny Hazelbide poked at him again disgustedly with the tip of one pointy-toed black high-heeled shoe, and was just getting ready to draw back her foot for an actual kick when he finally succeeded in croaking out that word. And it brought both old women to rigid attention as if it had been a Charm and a Spell and a Transformation all combined into one. The sound that had come out of Veritas’ mouth, strangled and deformed but comprehensible, was the word “Mules!” And once again, before he went back to the howling that was completely unlike the cries from outside—those were only terror—he said it. “
Mules!
”

“Mules,” repeated the Grannys, looking at one another. “Do you suppose ...”

“I do,” said Granny Gableframe. “What else could do that?”

“Maybe that thing hanging over our heads,” said Granny Hazelbide grimly, pointing up at the ceiling and tapping her foot to a smart beat ‘Two sharp ends it’s got like a double needle, and no knowing what it can do.”

“Well, we can’t talk to
it
, Hazelbide,” snorted Granny Gableframe, “that’s for sure. And the Twelve Gates only knows what will happen if one of those scared sick lunatics out there takes it into his head to shoot at the thing with a laser ... likely to mean the end of all of us, and nothing left where Ozark was but a puff of dust, if that happens. The Mules, on the other hand, we could talk to.”

“Gableframe ...”

“I said
talk
to! Not either one of us is equipped to do any mindspeaking, and the Mules know that full well. I mean
talk
, ordinary tongue-and-mouth-and-teeth talk.”

“What makes you think they’ll listen?”

“Hazelbide, you have brains in that head or pudding?” Granny Gableframe was clear out of temper. “Stand there and go wurra-wurra like that poor fool on the floor if you like, but any ninny can see there’s no way of talking to that ... creation ... up in the air, and the only clue we’ve got is what Veritas said, and I intend to hightail it for the stables!”

Granny Hazelbide knew sense when she heard it; she followed the other without a word, and without a glance behind her for the Magician of Rank in his awesome misery. She was only sorry there wasn’t time to look for Troublesome and make her go along with them.

At the stables, they found the Mules standing in ominous silence. If the expressions on their faces could be interpreted in any human framework, they looked both grim and determined. In any framework, they had their attention fully occupied with something.

Granny Gableframe marched up to Sterling, the best creature in the stable, and said howdydo and she’d like it to listen to her. And when that had no effect, she whacked it smartly right between the eyes.

“You, Mule!” said Gableframe. “I want a word with you, and I
do
know that you can understand me just fine!”

Sterling rolled her eyes and laid back her ears, and Granny Gableframe whacked her again. She’d never thought to see the day she’d be dealing with a hysterical
Mule
.

“You want to listen polite-like and of your own free will, that’s fine with me,” said the old lady. “I’ll be polite, too, as is proper, it pleasures me not atall to abuse any creature. But if you’d rather do it the hard way, I’m prepared for that, and I
do
intend to have you hear me.”

“You think that’ll work?” asked Granny Hazelbide, tapping her nose with her pointing finger. “It was always Responsible as talked to the Mules, and she had a mighty different approach to it.”

“You have a better idea?”

“
No
-sir, you go right to it. And I’ll try another one,” said Granny Hazelbide, and went off to make her word good.

“Sterling,” said Granny Gableframe, “I have reason to believe you’re trying to mindspeak poor Veritas Truebreed, and I’m here to tell you that if that’s what you’re up to you’re pouring sand down a rathole. He’s curled up in a hole in the wall like a puking babe, howling and begging to be shot or poisoned at once, he doesn’t care which, and a less promising mode of communicating I’ve never come across in all my born days! Now if you have something you’d like to get across to the Magician of Rank, m’dear Mule, I’d suggest you turn down the power somewhat more than a tad. You are addressing a human male, not Responsible of Brightwater, and he is most surely not up to taking in what you are putting out. Do you hear me. Sterling?”

The Mule gave her a look down its nose, and raised its ears one notch, and the Granny said it all over again, with more emphasis in the hard places.

“Tone it down!” she admonished Sterling, winding it up. “Tone it down or you might as well leave off entirely! That man’s mind is frail as a flower petal up there, you can’t just go banging around in it like some kind of natural disaster!”

Sterling whickered and ducked her head, and the Mules all around joined in.

“You suppose, Granny Hazelbide,” said Gableframe then, out of breath entirely, “you suppose that means we got it across7”

“If we didn’t, we probably can’t,” came the answer, “and the only way I know to find out is to go see what’s left of old Veritas Truebreed.” She brushed down her skirts and sneezed twice at the dust and remarked on stablemaids and how they got lazier every year, and Gableframe did the same, and then they looked at each other.

“You ready?” said Hazelbide.

“I’m not ready to go out and walk under that
thing
hanging in the air over my head; nor am I ready to see every last soul running around and screaming like their tails was caught in a door when it hasn’t yet done any of ‘em any harm
what
soever ... and I for sure don’t want to go stare at that pitiful excuse for a Magician of
Rank
. But I will, Hazelbide, I will. Let’s get at it.”

“Fool Mules,” Granny Hazelbide grumbled. “
Now
what?”

And all the way back to the Castle door and up the steps, she grumbled. It was one thing for the Mules to mindspeak the Magician of Rank—the Magicians had always known the Mules were telepathic, and vice versa—but the
Grannys
weren’t supposed to know all that. But Granny Hazelbide was ready to bet twelve dollars to a dillyblow that when the Mules
did
turn down their power of projection to accommodate the limitations of Veritas Truebreed’s mind the very first thing they’d done was inform him that the Grannys had told them to do so. And
that
was going to be a fine kettle of fish.

Things were a mite less chaotic ... the townspeople had recovered from their first shock at the sight of the giant crystal and were gathered in clumps, talking and shaking their heads. This was not exactly the normal order of the day, but the Grannys found it an improvement on the original running around in circles and screaming. They hurried past a group of Attendants and servingmaids that looked ready to head them off, and went straight on up to Veritas Truebreed to see if their trip to the stables had been a mission of mercy or a red herring.

They found the Magician of Rank much the worse for wear, white as a sheet and soaked with cold sweat, still rubbing his head and trembling all over. But he was able to talk.

“According to the Mules,” he said gruffly when they came through his door, “I’ve you to thank for an end to that unspeakable torture. And I
will
thank you—because if it had not stopped I would be dead—and then I would appreciate an explanation.”

Granny Gableframe didn’t miss a beat. She reminded him that the Mules’ telepathic ability was a pretty open secret after all these years. And she reminded him that
he
had been the one bellowing “Mules!” and they’d only followed directions. “And as for mindspeech,” she finished up crisply, “we Grannys don’t have it, so you needn’t go searching for revelations there. We went down to the stable and whacked the Mules over the head and told them—out loud—that if they were trying to talk to you they were hollering themselves into oblivion ... and then we came back to see what happened. You appear to be recovered— “

“I will
never
be recovered from that, thank you very much!”

“Never mind, Veritas Truebreed, you are at least on your feet and talking ‘stead of howling, and we’ll accept that for now. The question is: what have the Mules been telling you?”

The Magician of Rank swallowed and stammered, and Granny Gableframe threatened to kick him with her shoe the way Granny Hazelbide had.

“Speak up,” she said, infuriated. “Time’s a-wasting! The Mules never tried mindspeaking you before, and there’s never been a gigantic humungus
bod
acious chandelier-bobble hanging up in the air before, and I for one am inclined to believe there’s got to be a connection! What did the Mules want with you?”

“It’s a wild tale,” said Veritas Truebreed.

“It’s a wild
sight
,” said Granny Hazelbide. “You take a look?”

“I looked. I saw ... it. One of the basic primordial shapes.”

“Primordial shapes be hanged, do you know anything
use
ful?”

“Careful, Hazelbide, you’ll have a heart attack,” cautioned Granny Gableframe. “And a lot of help that’ll be.”

“Well, the man’s
mad
dening!”