The Merlin Conspiracy (44 page)

I
could not believe it when the Izzys turned up! It seemed like the last straw, even though it was more proof that I wasn't imagining the conspiracy, since it made it clear that Heppy and Judith had really vanished, too.

Then the Izzys insisted on coming with us to find this Romanov person. We should have simply dashed off and left them while they were busy pulling strings of cheese off their toast with their teeth. But they shouted to know what we were doing, and Nick took entirely the wrong line with them. He told them they had to stay behind and explain to Dora. He said they were too young to go on the dark paths. You would not
credit
the whining and arguing and winning persuasions this led to from the Izzys. When that didn't work, they followed it up with double yelling. At least that gave Grundo time to eat a proper breakfast.

When he and Toby had finished eating, I gave in. I said, “All right, you can come.” They instantly stopped whining, wiped their greasy hands on their sailor suits, and flung their arms round me, exclaiming that I was the most marvelous cousin in the
world
! I pushed them away. “On condition that you stop acting about and
behave
,” I added. They looked wronged and hurt and saintly. “Just stop trying to twist everyone around your greasy little fingers,” I said.

“Yes, cut the glamour,” Nick said. “You're like a couple of aging film stars. You could be sixty instead of six.”

“We're
not
six!” Isadora exclaimed—if she was the one in white. “We're nearly
nine
!”

“Whatever,” said Nick. “I've had enough. Let's go.”

We all bundled out into the garden at the precise moment when the goat bit through the last of her stake with a snap. Nick dashed over and caught hold of the stake at both ends, so that the chain fastened to the goat's neck couldn't slide off it.

“Now, Helga,” he said, “we want you to take us to Romanov. Romanov, Helga. All of you think very hard about this goat taking us back to her owner.”

Helga leered up at Nick with her evil goat's face and chewed her cud, quite unmoved. We stood round her, panting and trying to
will
her to obey Nick. I tried to find a spell among the hurt woman's flower files that would help. But that woman knew goats. I found, under
Teasel, to drive sheep without a dog
, and
to call cattle
, and
to influence a pig
, and after further searching, I found
to teach a dog to obey, to call a hawk to the hand
, and even
to tame a feral cat
, but not a single thing about goats. So I dropped that idea and looked through journey spells instead. I found the
Speedwell
spell and the one Mrs. Candace had used, and a whole string of magics called
journeys in the spirit
, none of which seemed quite right. The trouble with ordinary journey spells was that they were just that—spells for travel in country that you knew—and the spirit journeys meant that you left your body behind. I gave up and found one called
to bless a journey
instead.

And while we waited, I couldn't help noticing that it was the most heavenly day, one of those days with a milky look over the blue sky, where everything seems to be holding its breath for something marvelous to happen. Beyond the hazy chimneys around the garden, I could hear the huge, hushed mutter of London. The lawn we were standing on was gray-green with dew, marked all over with the faint green footsteps of salamanders. In the distance a silvery clock was striking the half hour, up and down the scale, as if London were singing encouragement to us.

By then Nick was putting out instructions to the goat so strongly that I was actually getting mental glimpses of a flat green shore where the sea was divided into big triangles of differently colored water. As the clock finished striking, Helga sighed. Then she ducked clear of Nick and bounced sharply away, pulling the chain taut with a rattle.

“All hold on to me and to one another,” Nick said. “Don't let go.”

We each snatched hold of the nearest person. Grundo grabbed Nick, and I took hold of Grundo's shirt. Behind me, one of the Izzys said, “You'll disarrange my
pleats
!” and as she said it, we were off at a run, diagonally across the dewy lawn. I just had time to think what fools we looked, rushing through the garden in a line behind a goat, when we were not in the garden anymore. We were plunging down a steep, earthy path that very quickly became a short tunnel. Some Izzy squeaked that it was
dark
. Then we came out into the queerest and most terrifying place I had ever seen.

It was like the sky on a summer night. It was dark and blue, but with light in it somewhere, so that it was not totally dark, but there were no stars. The terrifying part was that this sky was all round us, above and below, in an immense dark blue void. In front of us, stretching away into distant distance, was a line of bright islands. They were just hanging there, like unstrung beads, or huge stepping-stones, for as far as we could see. Each island was a slightly different shape from the others, but each shone out in various greens and golds and blues, blazing a path across the void. And each one was only about ten feet across.

As I got to the end of the tunnel, the goat jumped to the nearest island, which dipped and swung and swayed under her, quite hideously.

“I can't do that!” I gasped. I was giddy just to look.

“Interesting, though,” Nick panted, scrambling on the earthy edge of the tunnel. He sounded just as scared as I was, but he said, “They must be universes. It's just the way a goat would see things.”

The goat galloped on across the island, and he had to jump after her. The island positively plunged under his weight. I had to jump then, because Grundo leaped after Nick, and the island not only plunged again, but went jogging around sideways when the other three jumped onto it. I couldn't stand up. The awful thought was that if I over-balanced, I'd simply fall into that empty blue night and go
on
falling. It was too much for me. I went on one hand and both knees. Clinging to Grundo's shirt for dear life, I scrambled across a surface rather like roughened glass. If I looked down through the glassiness, I saw dim seas and continents, mountains and rivers and had to shut my eyes. It was truly horrible to have to open my eyes and stand up at the edge of the island and then to make that jump across nothing to the next island.

It was only just near enough for me to jump to. I was sure it was too far for the Izzys and Toby. I whimpered to Nick, and he hauled on the goat and stopped her on the dipping, jogging, slippery surface, while I stayed standing up and held out my arms to catch first Isadora, then Toby, and finally Ilsabil. Ilsabil nearly slipped off backward. My heart banged in my throat and my arms felt weak as I grabbed her wrists.

Worse, I looked back the way we'd come as I steadied her. It was hard not to. And the line of luminous islands stretched back into the distance that way, too. There was no way to tell which one was Blest. There was no way to tell which direction to go in. If it hadn't been for the goat, we would have been completely lost out there. The Izzys were making little squeaks about it. Toby's teeth were chattering. I think we were all shaking. But the goat dashed off as soon as Nick stopped hauling on her chain and leaped to the next, slightly nearer island, and we had to go, too.

We took the next few islands at a fairly swift pace, leaving a line of them bucking and twirling behind us and trying not to think about falling off. And Nick and the goat suddenly went down inside the next one. Oh, good! I thought. We've arrived! In the greatest possible relief, I went hurrying down another tunnel on Grundo's heels.

“Hell!” Nick said from in front of me. “This is wrong.
Wrong
, Helga!” We were in a library, the lot of us, surrounded by the smell of wood and books. I could have cried. The thought of having to come out of here and jump across islands again was almost more than I could take.

It was a dark, low-beamed place, full of dark books, so I didn't see straightaway that there were people in it. Then someone beside us said, “Who on earth are
you
? How did you get here?”

We all whirled round to find a lamplit table in an alcove just beside us. There were open books and pages of notes spread on the table. Four boys of about Nick's age were sitting there with pens in their hands and looks of slightly condescending amazement on their faces. Nick has the same superior look; it must go with that age group, I think. These boys were wearing suits of fairly new-looking pale suede, which had blotches of ink and dinner and chemicals down the fronts, quite disgustingly, and the blotches were as new-looking as the suede.

“Mistake,” Nick said to them. “We're just leaving.”

“But why the goat?” asked one of the boys. “Do tell.”

“You probably need a goat and a pair of twins for a transport spell, where they come from,” another said.

“Did you say
spell
or
smell
?” asked the third.

The fourth boy, who was rather spotty and looked even more superior than the other three, stared at Nick with his eyes narrowed. “You know,” he said, “it's that false novice who tried to get near the Prince in Marseilles. I recognize the psychic profile. Fear not,” he said to Nick. “I shan't give you away as long as you tell us how you got in among security like that.”

“That was a mistake, too,” Nick said, jangling at Helga's chain to get her to move. But she was interested in the papers on the table and would not budge. “Get that paper out of her reach,” Nick said. “She eats anything she can get near.”

“What, books, too?” asked the boy in the outside seat.

“Feed her Fusek's
Panmagicon
, then,” suggested the boy beyond him. “
I've
had a bellyful of it. Give the goat a turn.”

He was leaning over and wagging a big, leather-covered book in the goat's face when a door at the end of the room clashed open and a big, fat man with a beard strode in. He was wearing a suede suit, too, but his was dark and shiny with age and extremely tight across the front. Over it, he wore a flowing black robe. You could see at a glance he was a teacher. From the smug look on the spotty boy's face, I could tell that he had somehow fetched this man.

“What is going on here?” the teacher demanded, in a big, rumbling voice.

Nick shot me a desperate look. I looked back in equal desperation. Toby and Grundo seemed stunned. We all stood there, wordlessly.

To my surprise and gratitude, the Izzys summed up the situation and took a hand. “Oh!” Isadora cried. “I just
love
tight, fat tummies!”

“But not with a
beard
!” trilled Ilsabil. “Get him to shave that beard!”

Both twins twinkled up to the teacher and flung their arms round him. Ilsabil put up a hand to stroke his beard and cried out, “Yuk!
Bristles
, my dear!” while Isadora nestled her face against his tight suede-clad stomach, murmuring, “Ooh!
Fatness!
” I could feel both of them fairly pumping out glamour spells.

The teacher, who had been starting on some kind of spell of his own, was entirely disconcerted. He stepped back a pace and gave an uncertain laugh. This gave the rest of us the moment we needed to pull ourselves together and start urging the goat to leave. Leave! I thought.
Leave
here!

“Come
on
, Helga!” Nick said. “Romanov!”

Helga raised her head at that name, kicked up her heels, and galloped back the way she had come. Nick was jerked after her. I grabbed Nick, Grundo and Toby snatched a twin's arm each, and Grundo twined his hand painfully into my hair. We rushed in a bunch into a dark tunnel. Next second we had popped out on top of this world, where Helga was already jumping to another island.

“Thanks, you Izzys!” Nick panted as the island dipped and swung.

Somehow that void was worse the second time. I suppose it was because I knew what I was in for. The bright islands seemed so tiny, and they pitched and joggled so. I tried to ignore them and keep my eyes on the goat's white rear, unerringly skipping across the gaps ahead of me. Goats are a strange shape behind, almost as if they have coat hangers just above their tails. But it made me dizzy every time Helga's hooves hung in mid-void in front of me. I tried staring down at the vague landscapes inside the islands instead, and this was worse. The more closely I looked, the more the landscape seemed to pull me in. I found my knees sinking into the glassy surface and the hand I was resting on plunging downward onto a green-brown continent.

“This is awful!” I said.

Nick, ahead of me, having to use both hands on the stake and being towed like a water-skier from island to island, ought to have been hating it even more, but he said, “Oh, come on, Roddy. It's a unique experience.”

I could hardly believe it when there was a grunt of agreement from Grundo and another from Toby. One of the Izzys said, “We may be the first humans ever to do this.”

It was a shock to find them all braver than me. After that I tried to stand up and look straight ahead, and I really did not know which was worse—crossing the slippery, dipping islands or the awful moments when I had to jump, into nothing and over nothing, onto the next island—though the very worst moment was when I almost didn't land on one and nearly took the others with me. The journey seemed to go on for eternity.