The Merlin Conspiracy (46 page)

She said, in a creaking, hysterical voice, “I don't
know
!”

“Well, look at it this way,” I said. I was a bit flurried because she looked to me as if she was about to go
really
off the deep end. “It can't have been necessarily a bad thing, you being made to care about Grundo. Like symbiosis—you know, cats and dogs and humans—”

“And elephants,” Mini put in.

“And elephants,” I said. “You and Grundo both sound to have been pretty lonely and miserable at Court, but if you were looking after him, okay,
he
was all right, but
you
had someone to be fond of, too. And you strike me as being a pretty nice person. So maybe you'd have looked after him anyway. It's a shame he didn't trust you to try it on your own, that's all.”

Roddy put her fists up to her face. “Oh, go away, Nick! I really do need to be alone. Anyway, you have to go back inside and explain to Romanov about the conspiracy. I can't trust Grundo to explain properly.” There was a slightly horrible silence, then she said angrily, “I can't trust Grundo for
anything
now!” and burst into hard, hacking sobs, more like coughing than crying.

I put my arms round her. For just a mere, single instant I had a real, heavy body in my arms and a moist face against my cheek, with a real, difficult personality to go with them. It was a fairly astonishing feeling. Then Roddy fiercely shook me off and went running away to the other side of the island.

I said to Mini, “You keep an eye on her,” and went back into the house, hoping Romanov wouldn't think I'd given up too easily. But I was blowed if I was going to run after Roddy all over the island. That would
really
have irritated her.

Actually, when I went into the kitchen, Grundo was making a pretty good job of explaining the part he knew. As I came through the door, Romanov turned the razor edge of his profile against my soul and asked, “What do
you
know about the Merlin's part in all this?”

“I don't,” I said. “I never met him. Maxwell Hyde might know. All I know is that there's a lot of nasty types in Blest collecting salamanders for some sort of power push. And I saw Gwyn ap Nud carry Maxwell Hyde off. Roddy thinks he did that on the Merlin's orders. Or this woman Sybil's.”

Romanov's razor profile raised an eyebrow at me, and he said, “This woman who kidnaps a Magid, using the Merlin and the Lord of the Dead—there are going to be disturbances in a lot of worlds over this.” He turned to Grundo. “
Who
did you say your mother is?”

“Her name's Sybil Temple,” Grundo said.

A very strange look came over the slice of Romanov's face that I could see. It was as if he didn't know whether to feel angry, surprised, contemptuous, anxious, or sorry for someone—and probably more things I couldn't quite understand. “And I'm willing to bet she hasn't a notion what she's doing,” he said at length. “She always was a greedy fool, my ex-wife, Sybil.”

“Oh,” said Grundo.

“Yes,” said Romanov. “Oh.”

Things clunked about in my head, like slowly meshing gears. Then I said, “Oh,” too. Romanov's face came round to mine so quickly that I went backward a step. “It could be my fault she did this,” I said. “She phoned while you were ill—er, ten years ago? And I got fed up with hearing her and tuned her out of your life. She was shouting threats about doing really big magic when I turned her off.”

Romanov thought about this. His mouth pulled into a long, thin line in a way that quite scared me. “Water under the bridge,” he said finally. “She was always making threats. I used to provoke her. No time to share out blame now— Has anyone done
anything
about the balance of magic?”

I said I didn't think so. Grundo said, “Nobody believed Roddy when she said there was a plot. One of the Little People told her to raise the land.”

“Well?
Did
she?” Romanov snapped.

We stared at him, even the Izzys, impressed and alarmed at how urgent and dangerous he sounded. Grundo said, “We didn't know how to.”

Romanov jumped up from his seat at the table. “Oh, of all the—! When one of the Little People gives advice like that, you take it! I'll tell her …” He looked at the door as if he expected to drag Roddy back through it, just by looking. “One of you go and find her. You, Toby. The rest of you give me the names of all the missing people that you know. I'd better find what's happened to them before I go to Blest.”

THREE
RODDY

No, I still feel awful when I think how I felt about Grundo—as if my whole mind were like one of those floating islands we crossed. Nothing to support it, dipping sickeningly about, and nothing but emptiness all round. I don't want to write about this anymore. I know Nick will have plenty to say about Romanov.

FOUR
NICK

Roddy looked like death when Toby came back with her.

By that time Romanov had gone away to his workroom. Such a strong gush of magic came from there that Grundo and I broke out in a sweat and the Izzys went on about the way the hair on their arms was standing up. A right song and dance they made about it, too. They were
such
irritating kids.

Romanov shot back into the kitchen, saw Roddy, and said, “Good. Come with me,” and he led her away into the living room, saying, “I can only explain what you'd be trying to do and the way I'd set about it myself. You'll have to find your own means....”

That was all I heard before the door shut, but when Roddy came back, she looked as if she had slightly more interest in life. She said Romanov was in his workroom again. The Izzys wailed. But it wasn't long before the gush of magic stopped, thank goodness! Romanov came into the kitchen slowly, looking puzzled.

“I think I know where they all are,” he said, “but it makes me wonder just what
is
going on. Have you all finished eating? Good. We'll go and collect the missing persons before I take you all back to Blest.”

Romanov came to a decision and then did what he'd decided so quickly that it made you feel left behind and breathless. He led us outside, and there was Mini, waltzing toward the house, looking very pleased with herself. She had a long double seat strapped to her back, with space for at least three people sitting back to back on either side. I'd ridden on a seat like that in a zoo once. This one was sky blue.

“You look smart!” I said.

“I do, don't I?” she said. “I do love going on expeditions. I've been on a lot now, but I never stop feeling excited.”

“Are you sure you can carry all seven of us?” Romanov asked her.

She snorted through her trunk. “Easy. I'm a
big
elephant.”

A sort of platform had appeared out of nowhere beside the house, with a ladder up to it, so that we could climb into the seat. Romanov warned us to arrange ourselves so that our weights balanced and, while Toby, Roddy, and one Izzy were climbing up onto Mini's right side, he shot off to have a look at Helga. By the time Mini had turned herself round and Grundo and the other Izzy and I were getting into the left-hand side of the seat, Romanov was back. He was grinning in a sharp slash across his face.

“Is Helga all right?” Toby called out anxiously.

“Fine. She's got two kids, a nanny and a billy,” Romanov told him. Toby was glad, but he was upset, too. He said we shouldn't have made Helga bring us here when she was so near to having kids. And the Izzys began squalling that they had to get down and
see
the new kids. Romanov stared at the nearest Izzy, enough to shut one of them up at least, and then looked up at me in a way that was almost like one normal person confiding in another. “One of each sex,” he said. “That's a balance. Let's hope it's some kind of omen.” Then he came up the steps and hopped across Mini's neck in front of the seat, where he sat sort of scrunched down like a mahout. “Right, Mini,” he said. “Off you go. North quadrant.”

Mini surged into a walk, round the end of the house, down the grassy bank, and—with great sucking, sloshing noises—straight out into the marshy water there. The seat swayed about on her back. By the time we were a hundred yards out from the island, with a mild wind tossing our hair about and mosquitoes beginning to home in on us, I was trying not to feel seasick. Part of it was because I was riding sideways. In order to see where we were going, I had to look across Grundo and an Izzy and over Romanov's head. But most of my unhappiness was due to the swaying and the steady sloshing of Mini's feet. I kept looking down nervously to make sure she was not out of her depth. But the water must have been very shallow all the way. She just churned up marshy stinks and set big brown bubbles popping for ten feet all around.

I could really have done without those Izzys whining that it was not
fair
, they wanted to see the baby
goats
. Roddy snapped at them, but it made no difference. I just tuned them out in the end. By the time we were right out into the great sheet of water and the island was out of sight behind us, I simply was not hearing them.

Soon after this there was vague, misty shore ahead, rocky and pinkish. Mini heaved up onto it, sliding the Izzy into Grundo and Grundo into me, and marched on, stump, stump, stump, through what seemed to be rocky desert. There was nasty, steamy heat. Everything was sort of misty. The Izzys forgot the goats and whinged about the heat for a while, until Mini's mud-crusted feet began padding along a proper pavement, where we came under a high roof of some kind, and it was cooler.

I didn't realize where we were for a moment. I just knew it
smelled
familiar, in a way that made me faintly alarmed. Then I noticed that there were shops all along the side of the tunnel that I was facing. I craned round behind myself and saw a parapet, a cliff of shops and houses in the distance opposite, and bridges spanning in between. When we went swaying past a huge hoist, I was sure. We were in Loggia City.

But it looked quite a bit different. The pavement Mini's feet were on had hollow, worn places. There was litter blowing everywhere, and the paint on the hoist was peeling. None of the shops at the back of the arcade appeared to be at all prosperous. Some were boarded up. The rest had desperate-looking notices in the windows, saying 90%
OFF
!! and
EVERYTHING MUST GO
!, and they didn't seem to have much for sale inside except for shoddy-looking rolls of plain cloth. Nobody was in there buying anything either.

“What's happened here?” I called over to Romanov.

“The workers on the top terrace left,” he called back. “Someone told them they were producing works of art that people would pay a great deal for. They concentrated on tapestry after that. I helped them migrate to another world some years ago now. They're doing very well there.”

I found I was crouching down in my end of the seat, trying to hide my hot face. Who would have thought it? I casually tell an old man that his tapestry was fabulous, and ten years later the whole economy of a city is grinding to a halt. Who would have
thought
it?

Somebody shouted, “Hey, you! Halt!”

Mini's pacing feet faltered. “Keep going,” Romanov said.

Her feet picked up their pace again. The person shouting got out of the way in a hasty scamper of yellow uniform, but he kept on shouting. “No animals on this level! What do you think you're
doing
?”