The Merlin Conspiracy (49 page)

“I don't think you will,” I said, “unless you can break his concentration first. It won't even start to unravel unless you can force him to make a hole in his pattern.”

“How do we do that?” Nick demanded, standing too close to me. I felt his warmth sort of pushing at me and moved away. He followed me, saying, “Joel came and had a conversation with us and didn't slip up for one moment as far as I can see. He must be doing it on autopilot.”

Toby nudged Grundo, and Grundo gave one of his smoothly wicked grins. “Why don't we,” he suggested, “set the Izzys on him?”

The Izzys, who had been standing sighing and fidgeting and looking pious and wronged, at once became extremely indignant. “Do you take us for
dogs
?” Isadora demanded.

Ilsabil said, loudly and shrilly, “Take no notice, my dear. Per-thetic just wants us to get wrapped in white cobwebs, too. He
said
so.”

“Please be quiet,” Toby said, looking anxiously across at Joel, bowed over in his chair.

“And don't be silly,” Grundo said. “You'd be quite safe if you put your glamour on him.”

They heaved dramatic sighs. “Our glamour doesn't work anymore,” Ilsabil said tragically.

“Yes, it does,” I said. “It just doesn't work on any of
us
.”

“Look what you did to that fat teacher,” Toby said.

“We're wise to you, you see,” Grundo explained. “But
he
isn't. And he's got two-thirds of his mind on his binding anyway.”

The Merlin was staring up at us with desperate hope. I looked at Romanov, who was watching the Izzys thoughtfully. “What do you think?” I asked him.

“It's worth a try,” he said. “If they can make the slightest break in that spell, I can probably do the rest. I don't think we'll get anywhere without some kind of distraction. I'll give you strong protections,” he said to the Izzys.

The Izzys looked at him the way courtiers do when a foreign ambassador offers a bribe, very haughty and honorable, with just a touch of well-judged doubt. “My dear, we couldn't possibly!”

Nick leaned toward them across the Merlin's head. “I don't believe this!” he said. “You get offered the chance to behave as dreadfully as you can, and you turn it down! Where's your pride, both of you? Go and show us just how awful you can be.”

They gave him wide-eyed looks. “You mean,
flirt
with him?” Ilsabil asked.

“Be
rude
?” said Isadora. “But, my dear, I'm a polite person!”

“Then you can't do it,” Nick said. “Okay. You stopped that fat schoolmaster in the middle of a spell, but this one is about a hundred times more difficult. Sorry I asked. I can see it's too much for you.”

The Izzys drew themselves tall. They looked at one another. “Shall we show him?” Ilsabil said.

“As a great favor,” Isadora suggested. “Graciously.”

“Right,” Nick said, and without more ado he lifted the nearest twin over the plastic wall. Romanov, grinning a bit, swung the other twin over beside her. “I still think you can't do it,” Nick said.

Both Izzys stuck their chins up at him. But they had not done yet. They turned round, with their stomachs and their hands pressed against the wall, and looked sulky. “We need a bribe,” said Isadora.

“We can't proceed without,” said Ilsabil. Both pairs of their eyes flickered toward Romanov, calculatingly.

“Oh, for—” Nick began, but Romanov interrupted him. “
What
bribe?”

“One of us is going to be turned out when we're fifteen,” Ilsabil explained.

“So could you make it that Heppy dies, please?” Isadora said. “So there will be only three Dimbers and we can
both
stay.”

Quite honestly, they took my breath away. The Merlin's jaw dropped, and we shook our heads at one another, speechless. The boys were not at all speechless. They all said in different hoarse whispers that the Izzys were unfeeling
brats
—and worse—and then looked nervously over at Joel's distant, brooding figure, in case he realized what was going on.

Romanov made no attempt to be furtive. He said, in that level, cutting voice of his, “You must have a very limited outlook. Do you really
want
to spend your lives in the same old place, doing the same old rituals, year after year? I couldn't. I was booked to do that, and I couldn't face it. I got out.”

The Izzys' two little pointy faces turned up to his, amazed and arrested. “Do you mean we don't
have
to?” said Ilsabil.

“But we're hereditary witches,” Isadora said wistfully. “We can't both leave.”

“I don't see why not,” Romanov said. “Haven't you got any cousins?”

Ilsabil turned to Isadora. “The hereditary men are always having daughters,” she said. Isadora nodded. They both looked expectantly up at Romanov.

“I'm sure I can arrange for one of those daughters to take over,” the Merlin said. “But you have to get me free first.”

They gave him startled looks, as if they had forgotten he was there. Their backs straightened. Their chins stuck out. “We'll do it,” Ilsabil announced.

“As a
great
favor,” Isadora added.

“Go on, then,” said Romanov.

They turned round. They raised their arms. Then they advanced upon Joel in his chair with little twinkling steps, wafting their arms like ballet dancers. “Where is this thick, sweaty man?” warbled one.

“I
love
men who pray all the time!” the other's voice rang out. “So godly!”

“Oh, you're
wonderfully
disgusting!” they both cried, and threw their arms round Joel.

It was marvelous. I leaned on the wall to watch. Joel was jerking around in his seat, looking panicked and bewildered.

“I don't think he's got a chance,” Toby said, full of rare family pride.

“The glamour's on like a searchlight,” Grundo agreed.

Beside me, Romanov was now crouching beside the Merlin's chair and sweating with effort and urgency. “Back me, friend,” he said to the Merlin. “Help me find the pattern. The thing's like matted wool.” Then he looked up at me, even more urgently. “You go to Blest and raise the land,” he said to me. “Take the boys with you to help you. You should have done it
weeks
ago. I'll join you as soon as I've finished here.
That
way.” He pointed along the wall. “Go that way. And
hurry
!”

The four of us set off along the wall at a run. Nick groaned because after a few yards we were in a narrow, rocky passage with no light at all. “I seem to have spent
aeons
in these paths,” he said, stumbling about. “Bloody ages!”

Grundo and Toby and I raised magelight the way we had been taught. This was the first time I had done it in earnest, and in spite of my dread that we were going to be too late getting to Blest, I was delighted when the blue light appeared, cupped in my hand. Or I was until our three blue lights blazed in the wide green eyes of a huge, gaunt spotted cat that was trotting swiftly toward us. We all gasped and backed against the rock wall. But the creature simply trotted straight past us, intent on something else. It had
such
an intent look, in fact, that it brought me out in shivers. It was off to do something terrible.

“Romanov's called her,” Nick said, and sighed. Then he cursed again because he couldn't seem to raise magelight.

“You had it on your forehead when I first saw you,” I said.

“That was only because Maxwell Hyde gave it to me,” he said. He was really mortified. He had to get Toby to lead him. “And I suppose we'll be blundering along here for hours,” he grumbled.

I don't know if it was hours. It felt entirely timeless to me. And, as Grundo said, it was better than having to do goat leaps across infinity.
Anything
was better, to my mind. I just kept hoping that we would arrive in time and that I could manage to raise the land in the way I had discussed with Romanov. And wondering what awful thing might happen if I did.

To take my mind off it, I said to Grundo, “You knew about the Izzys' glamour because you were doing the same thing to me, weren't you?”

He just gave me one of his smoothly guilty looks and changed the subject. “What did that man Joel mean about atonement?”

“He and another prayerboy murdered their Prayermaster ten years ago,” Nick said. “He may think he's making up for that.”

“What, by messing up Blest and a hundred other worlds?” Toby said. “That doesn't make sense!”

“Taking them over in the name of righteousness,” Nick said. “It must make sense to him, or he wouldn't have been working so hard.”

They went on trying to understand it, and it didn't help me at all. Nick had told me not to be so tense all the time, but I couldn't help it. It seemed to me I had every reason to be tense. I kept thinking of my parents, hidden in that cotton stuff so that I hadn't even been able to find them, draped in prayer spell, hardly able to ease a crick in their necks, let alone their aching feet, standing, standing, while a religious madman wove the spell tighter and tighter yet. And I knew that if things had gone wrong, Romanov and the Izzys could be standing in that crowd by now, draped in prayer spell, too, and we might be the only ones left who could do anything to help Blest.

Just as I thought I couldn't bear any more, the dark path took us downhill into a bright, misty morning, and we were back almost where we had started, in Grandad's garden in London.

Dora was standing by the stump of the goat's stake, looking woebegone. “The goat's gone,” she said. “Did you know?”

She did not seem in the least surprised at our sudden arrival. When Toby went up to her and wrapped his arms around her, she patted his head in an absentminded way and said, “Where were you all yesterday? You should have been here.”

Toby looked up at her. “What day is it?”

“Sunday morning,” Dora told him. “Not to worry. You're all here now.”

Toby twisted round to look at Nick. “We should have rescued salamanders from the airport last night.”

“There isn't a thing we can do about that now,” Nick said. “Dora, you do drive Maxwell Hyde's car sometimes, don't you? Would you mind very much driving us all to …” He looked round at me. “Where, Roddy?”

Romanov had told me of five places where you could raise the land. “One place was not too far from London,” I said. “It hasn't got a name. He just described it. If we take the main road west, I'll say when I think we're there.”

Dora seemed perfectly willing to drive us. Nick said we'd find some food and eat it in the car, and we were all hurrying toward the house when Grundo growled in my ear, “Salamanders. They were all over the place when we were here before. Where are they?”

He was right to ask. When we had rushed out to find Helga, I hadn't exactly been looking for salamanders, but I had known they were there, either scooting out of our way or curled up in warm places, watching us. Now they were not here. If I concentrated very hard, I could sense some of them. They were in hiding, very deep hiding, crouched up, nervous and afraid. The rest were just not there.

This was not the only thing wrong. Now I was attending, I knew everything was too quiet. I had been in London on a Sunday before, of course, and it was always much quieter than on a weekday. But before, there had always been the hum and mutter of distant people and remote traffic or the occasional thunder of a bus. Now there was hardly any sound, not even from pigeons or sparrows. When I looked at Grandad's garden, it was standing perfectly still. No insects flew; not a leaf twitched. It was—well—not right.

TWO
RODDY & NICK

Nick has just come down here to the dining room to tell me he thinks he can't write about some of this next part. I can't say I blame him. I'm going to do my best to put everything in, but there is at least one bit I don't know. I said he must write that. He says he'll try.

Anyway, my feeling of something being very wrong got worse as we drove out of London. Because it was such a hot, sultry day, Dora folded back the top of Grandad's car, and we could look up at the sky. The sky was wrong. There were clouds in the blueness, very pale white, streaky clouds, and instead of being slanted across the sky, as such clouds usually are, these were in a great stationary swirl, with long, vague arms of cloud stretching out of the swirl. Each long, vague arm went stretching away downward to some point that was out of sight over the horizon. Nick said it was like the ghost of a tornado.