The Merlin Conspiracy (27 page)

I stopped dead.

Someone else was in the water, rolling gently in the shallow ripples. He was brown and red and shiny. At first I thought he was alive and trying to roll out of the water. He worked about so. Then the ripples turned him so that an eye stared at me out of a cracked gold-rimmed lens. Above and below the eye was a horrible red and white mess. Then I hoped he
was
dead. No one should be alive with his head smashed like that. The clear water was red-brown around him in clouds. Lots of little flies were sort of sizzling this way and that on him as he rolled. And he rolled the other way, letting me see the embroidery on his back all chopped open and red, and a white glimpse of shoulder blade as the flies went down on him again.

I made myself creep a step nearer. My foot knocked wood, and I looked away from the Prayermaster for a moment to see the spade and the ax that had done this to him lying on the pebbles. The metal parts were red and gummy, with hairs sticking to them. I thought of Japheth running to the flier covered in what I'd taken for red embroidery. I gagged. I couldn't help it. I'm ashamed, but I'm no good at this kind of thing at all. I made one frantic scramble into the water to touch the Prayermaster's staring, tepid face and knew for sure that he was dead. Then I went crashing and crunching up the pebbles until he was out of sight, and threw up. By the time I crawled up over the grass lip with the taste of sicky coffee in my nose, I was shaking worse than Mini.

“
Is
someone dead there?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Dreadfully. Let's go somewhere else. There's nothing we can do until Maxwell Hyde wakes up.”

We went back to the sunny place by the garden wall, and I sat there like a sack. Mini kept curling her trunk half round me, then taking it away. I think she was making sure I was still alive.

After a long time I said, “I'm sorry I yelled at you. I was in a bad mood.”

“I know,” she said. “You keep having to feed people. I, er, I'd eaten a lot of apples anyway before you came out.”

“That could be a mistake,” I said. I watched the hens pecking about for a while, and then I said, “There's a triangle of sea near where we came in that had a tropical look. You could have your swim there.”

“I've lost the urge,” she said sadly.

We were still there when the house door opened and Maxwell Hyde came out looking very much awake. He was all trim and neat and shaved, though his clothes still seemed damp. “Can't you pull yourself together?” he said to me. “You're filling the air with doom and gloom. You
and
the elephant. What's wrong with you?”

“I'll show you,” I said. I got up and reached up to give Mini a pat. “You needn't come,” I said to her, “unless you want to.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I think I'll go and have that swim instead.”

“You do that. But,” I said, “don't drown or anything. I can't stand any more.”

She curled up her trunk and opened her mouth in amusement. “Elephants float beautifully,” she said, and went lumbering off.

I took Maxwell Hyde in the opposite direction, not very willingly. I could feel my feet dragging. He gave me one of his keen looks and said, “Can you understand what the elephant's saying, then?”

“Yes,” I said. “Can't you?”

He shook his sprucely combed gray head. “No, I can't. It's not precisely a universal gift, lad. Has she told you what Romanov wants with an elephant, then?”

“He doesn't,” I said. “I mean, she isn't his. I met her stuck in the dark paths. She belonged to a circus, but it got struck by a storm—it sounded like a tornado from what she said—and she ran away in a panic. She was my third person needing help, like you said.” I'd been trying to think who the second person was that I had helped after Roddy. I knew it had to be someone in Loggia City, but I couldn't see who.

“I
see
,” he said. “That's a weight off my mind. I'd been puzzled to death why Romanov could possibly need an elephant. So you can understand animal speech?”

“Not the goat,” I said. The goat was coming down from among the trees as I said this. It had a spray of leaves sticking out of its mouth and curiosity all over its face.

“Goats,” said Maxwell Hyde, “are a special case. Mad as hatters, all of them. Now where is this thing we've come to see?”

“Down here,” I said, and led him off down the pebbles and pointed with my head turned away. “Down in the water.”

“My God!” he said. Then, after some crunching about, “This is horrible! Hacked to death with a
spade
!” There were watery, shingly sounds. I guessed he was dragging the Prayermaster out of the sea, but I still couldn't look. “Nothing much to be done except hope he died quickly,” he said, coming back up beside me and swallowing a little. “Who was he?”

“The Prayermaster from Loggia City who wanted to kill Romanov,” I said. By this time I was swallowing, too.

“I thought I recognized the embroidery,” Maxwell Hyde said. “Biter bit, eh? All right, there's no need to stay here if it makes you throw up. Come back to the house. There's something I want to ask you about there.”

I set off thankfully and came face-to-face with the goat at the top of the shingle. “Oh, lord! It won't—won't try to eat
him
, will it?”

“I don't think they're carnivores, but we'll make sure anyway,” he said, and he did the horn-and-rump hold on the goat again and ran it back to the sheds before it could so much as bleat. “Go and find some rope,” he said to me. “Bound to be some in these sheds.”

I looked into the shed nearest the house, expecting the smart motorboat. It was just a pathetic old punt now, but there was a coil of rope hanging on the wall beside it, along with garden tools, a saw, and two empty hooks. “I think the spade and the ax came from there,” I said, handing Maxwell Hyde the rope.

He was looking a bit irritable because the goat was jumping up and down under his hands, but he said quite coolly, “Bound to have come from somewhere near. Wrap one end of that round the creature's neck—quickly.”

I managed to put a loop of the rope more or less in the right place and then watched, fascinated, while the loose end wrapped itself round the rest of the rope and tied itself into a firm knot.

“Thanks. Phew!” said Maxwell Hyde, standing up rather breathlessly. “Active,
smelly
beasts, goats are.” He walked off toward the house. I looked back uncertainly, but the other end of the rope was tied somehow to the shed door and the goat had already run out almost to the whole length of it. Impressive. “I must say,” he said, “that I did wonder a bit at that child running to the flier all covered in blood like that, but I was a bit tired just then.”

Of course it had been blood. I felt a fool, thinking it had been embroidery.

“Who was flying the machine?” Maxwell Hyde asked me.

“It must have been the other prayerboy. Joel,” I said. “Unless they had a pilot with them.”

“Could have been a boy,” he commented. “Went up in a surge like an amateur, full throttle, wagging about and so on. And where was Romanov in all this?”

“He was in bed. He's awfully ill,” I said protectively. “I know he was because I was running around inside shutting windows in case the Prayermaster tried to get in.” I heard myself saying this, and for the first time I wondered about myself. I had been looking after Romanov and protecting him ever since I got here, and yet Romanov had seemed ready enough to bump
me
off for money if he'd decided I deserved it. I wondered if it was magic, a protective spell perhaps, but I didn't really think it was. I think I just admired him. I said, again protectively, “They really were wanting to kill him. They called him unclean. But all he'd done was give the embroidery workers stuff to block the radiation.”

“So that's what annoyed them,” Maxwell Hyde said thoughtfully. “Right. I have my own witness that you were locked inside with an elephant in front of the door, and I didn't spot any blood on you, so you're clear, I think.” He opened the door, and I followed him into the kitchen as he said, “But I only have your word for Romanov.”

“I can tell you write detective stories,” I said.

He turned round at me in a way that made me almost back out again. “I am also a Magid,” he said, “and it is my job to look into this.” He was full of authority. I felt as if I'd made a loud joke at a funeral. Then he relaxed a bit and said, “But I want your opinion about this first.” He led me to the living room, where he opened the door and said, “Well? What's going on here?”

I gawped a bit. It was like another shed in there now. The walls were warped, gray boards with green mossy stuff at the bottom, and there were holes in the splintered old wood of the floor. I could see water glinting and lapping through the holes. All the windows were crooked and draped with cobwebs, and as for the two chairs I had given him to sleep on … Well, it was lucky I'd draped a rug on them. They were two rotten old deck chairs, and the canvas in one was quite perilously split.

“I think it must be because Romanov's so ill,” I said.

He frowned at me.

“The island and everything else have been getting smaller and messier ever since I came here and found him,” I explained. “He must be too ill to sustain the magic or something.”

“That's most unlikely,” Maxwell Hyde told me sternly. “The island and its contents have to be self-sustaining or he'd never be able to go away. My guess is that it all ought to draw energy from each of the worlds it's part of. Not much from each, to keep the balance. Cunning stuff. Romanov is
good
at it, lad. Where is he? We'd better look into this.”

“Along here,” I said, and took him to the bedroom.

It was awful in there. It had become a tiny, poky room with thick walls, dribbling wetness and covered with black flecks of mildew. It was a fug of sickness. Romanov looked like a corpse laid out on the narrow bed, almost as bad as the Prayermaster. His cheeks had sunk in, and his hair had got pasted to his head with sweat, so that his face was a sharp, gray, zigzag skull. I was relieved when I saw he was still breathing.

“Faugh!”
said Maxwell Hyde.

I made for the window to get it open—or try to—but he barked at me, “
Stop
! Stand just where you are and don't move!”

I stood still, more or less treading on Romanov's suede jacket. “What has he got?” I asked.

“Let's find out,” Maxwell Hyde said. He leaned over and, very delicately, touched Romanov's sweaty forehead. He grunted, but Romanov never moved. Then, to my surprise, Maxwell Hyde took his fingers away, rather as if he were running them along an invisible line of string, and felt across through the air until he was all but touching my forehead. “Thought so,” he muttered, and felt away again, back to Romanov.

“What is it?” I said.

“Look,” he said. “Or can't you see it?”

I could see it as soon as he told me to look. There was a blurred line of filthy-looking grayish yellow light stretching between Romanov's head and mine. It was really nasty. It made me almost want to throw up again. “Yes, I can see it,” I said.

“How often did you touch him?” Maxwell Hyde asked sharply.

I thought. As far as I could tell, I hadn't. “I don't think I did,” I said. “I didn't quite like to. I mean …”

“Well, that's something to be thankful for, at least,” Maxwell Hyde said. “He could well be dead now if you had.” He stood up straight and stared me in the eye. “I'm going to want a detailed report from you, of everything you've done since you vanished from London, my lad. But before you do
anything
else, you're going to oblige me by going and joining the elephant in the sea. Take all your clothes off, leave them on the beach for me to delouse, and go right under. There's nothing like saltwater for cleaning black magic off. If you find the elephant's in fresh water, don't go in there. Find a piece that's genuine sea. Go on. I'm going to be busy working on this end while you bathe.”

I crawled away, feeling as if I'd been convicted of leprosy. I wondered if I'd ever like myself again. Even the sight of Mini on her side in crystal blue water, spraying her own back through her trunk, failed to cheer me up.

“Is that water salt?” I asked her.

“Very,” she said merrily. “It makes me sneeze.”

I tasted it untrustingly, and it was. Very. It practically skinned my tongue. In fact, it was so salty and so easy to swim in that I wondered whether Romanov had included a piece of the Dead Sea at this point. Mini was so delighted to have me in the water, too, that I began to feel quite a bit better quite soon. We churned about and threw swaths of water at one another. She rolled and I splashed.

Eventually I looked up to see Maxwell Hyde on the grass, going carefully over my clothes. He was blowing into my shoes as I got out and went up to him.

“That's better,” he said. “Clothing's clear. Let's look at you. Turn round. Raise your arms. Bend down so that I can see the top of your head. Right. Fine. You're clear, too, now,” he said, handing me a ragged old towel. “Get dry and get dressed.”