Ozark Trilogy 3: And Then There'll Be Fireworks (20 page)

And there was the delicate problem of placating the Magicians of Rank. For them to know as much as they knew already was chancy and would interfere for a while with their effectiveness; for them to know anything more would destroy them utterly. She hadn’t time to be everywhere and do everything herself, nor was that her role. Ways would have to be found, pretty fabrications that skirted the far edge of the truth, facesaving explanations that the eight distinguished gentlemen could grab at and cling to. That line of Veritas Truebreed’s, that named her as a catalyst, would do for a start.

She leaned over the edge of the balcony, looking down on the back of the Delegation from Castle Wommack; it seemed to her that the shoulders of Lewis Motley Wommack the 33
^rd
had lost a good deal of their arrogance. That suited her; and it would suit her to find him something exceptionally burdensome to do for all the rest of his life. Or until her anger was all used up, whichever just happened to come first.

She was still stunned at the lists, that seemed to be endless, of the dead and the injured and the desolate ... that would be a pain she carried to her grave, she rather expected. But she could not afford to indulge it, as she could not afford to indulge herself in any other mercy granted the rest of the living creatures of this planet. Responsible of Brightwater, Meta-Magician of Ozark for this generation and young enough to have scores of long hard years ahead of her, watched only long enough to be certain that the one negative vote to come in on the roll call came from Granny Leeward of Castle Traveller, And then she stood up and stretched a tad, and headed back to her rooms to set to work.

Above the Castles of the Twelve Kingdoms of Ozark, slowly, reluctantly, the great crystals were going pale and silent. The thrumming that had filled the whole world for days was no more than a tone just at the limit of the ear’s perception, and dying fast. In the stables, the Mules were whuffling their approval.

And Sterling waited, with a message for this Responsible, to be passed on when her death drew near to the next in line, and so on down through time:

THE OUT-CABAL REMINDS YOU THAT THE PLANET OZARK REMAINS UNDER CONSTANT OBSERVATION.