The Merlin Conspiracy (53 page)

Gwyn ap Nud bowed. He has the most terrible grim smile. “Well met indeed, Majesty. I am taking in my harvest, but there is one that must be yours.” He pointed with his flapping grisly horsehead to the man Roddy says was Sir James. Then he rode away, and I didn't see him anymore.

The Count of Blest beckoned with his free hand to someone behind him. “Take him and tie him to the tail of the last horse,” he said. And that person—he was a big, muscular knight—leaned down and dragged Sir James away to somewhere behind. Sir James was going on about this being an outrage, but nobody took any notice, and after a while he stopped, and I didn't see
him
anymore either. But the Count of Blest began slowly riding on again, while I sat and noticed in a dazzled way that the swirls of snow from the blizzard were following exactly the lines of the vortex and sort of centering over that smoking bucket that Japheth had left standing there.

I looked up because the King—the present-day King of Blest, that is—was trying to catch hold of the Count of Blest's bridle. The poor man looked almost as miserable as I felt. His face was the bright red that you go in snow, and his beard was fluffy with white flakes. “Forgive me,” he said, looking up at the Count of Blest. “I haven't exactly done well, have I?”

“Others have done almost as badly,” the Count of Blest said, quite kindly, riding on. He kept going, so that the King had more or less to trot beside him. “It is no easy matter to hold a kingdom in trust.”

“I know, I
know
!” the King cried out. “I'll do better from now on, I swear! How long have I got?”

I think this was what the King
really
wanted to know, but the Count of Blest answered, “That is not a question I should answer or one you should ask. But choose your advisers more carefully in future. Now, forgive me. I have to ride the realm.”

He rode away, and lots of tall horse legs went past me, some with armed men, some with incredible-looking ladies, and some with weirder people. The King hurried after them for a while, looking snubbed and despairing, and then gave up. Endless riders went mistily past us both.

At the same time—Grundo says it had been going on all this while—hosts of the transparent folks came hurtling down from the spirals of snow, and a lot of others came with them, who looked to be the dark, riotous, bloodthirsty invisibles that usually only came out at night. And the whole lot came sweeping crosswise through the circle of people who had been watching. They kept pouring through, hundreds of them, thousands. They ought to have got in the way of the Count of Blest's riders, but in some queer way, they seemed to be on a different band of space. I sat watching them streaming by me and all the people who hadn't run for cover in those buses, including the two Archbishops, running away from them madly. And, at the same time, I watched princely knights and great ladies riding through the same spot. It was really odd.

The dragon came back in the midst of it all. Everything got darker underneath him. When I looked up through the driving, winding snow, I could faintly see the vast gray shape of him hovering above the weather. His huge voice boomed down to me.

“
GIVE ME THE END OF IT
.”

I knew what he meant. I got up and tottered through the streams of transparent people, and among horses' legs that went past without touching me, to Japheth's smoking bucket. Grundo and Toby were there, trying to shelter behind it—not that they could, because the snow was blinding in from all directions. I was really glad to see them. I was shaky all over, and I kept jerking with the salamander magic. I knew I couldn't manage on my own.

“Help me,” I said. “We've got to get the end of this vortex up to the dragon.”

They looked pretty scared, but they put out their arms and helped me try to lift it. It was surprisingly easy. Toby said, “It's quite loose!” It was, and it wasn't heavy either, just awkward. I had to lift it by myself the last foot or so, because I was so much taller than they were, and it hummed and slithered and wobbled in my arms, but I managed to hang on to it until a great shiny claw reached down through the storm and hooked it off me.

“
NOW FOR CHANGES
,” the dragon said.

I am not sure what he did. I heard his wings thunder. Then things went different. About ninety degrees different, and then stuck there.
Magic
was different, all over everywhere.

I had cast magic loose; the dragon fixed it again. He turned the vortex through a quarter circle and sealed it that way. I felt the change, but I was watching my grandfather Gwyn ride away out into the distance, dark against the snow, with a long line of people trudging after the horses, getting smaller and smaller. He had never looked at me once. Knowing what I know about him, I suppose that was a good thing, but I had wanted him to
see
me. I wanted him to give me at least a look of approval. But he just rode away.

I blinked. The tears in my eyes seemed to have got into the landscape. All the melting snow was winking rainbow colors in the low sun and flaring off the white slabs of snow along the trilithons of Stonehenge. Stonehenge was back in the same world with us now. I looked where I had seen—or thought I saw—Salisbury and Old Sarum, and there was no sign of them. That was when I realized how much the magic had changed. It was going to be much harder to see things or do things now. As far as I could tell, that went for all the other worlds, too.

The dragon was gone. I was almost the only person standing in that flaring, melting landscape.

Everyone seemed to have run away or driven off. In the distance the King's two limousines and one of the buses were bumping over the grass to the road, but there were a lot of empty cars and buses left behind. One was the car we had come here in. Dora had gone. Some witches had given her a lift back to London.

The three boys were sitting beside a rusty old bucket not far away, all very bedraggled. Nick kept shaking and jerking. As soon as I saw him,
Rosemary
came into my head,
healing
. I was so relieved I nearly cried again. I had carefully not looked for the hurt woman's knowledge, in case I had lost it in the vortex. I dragged myself over to Nick, running through the
Rosemary
file to see what would help him.

Before I got there, people shouted from up the hill, and the elephant came treading cautiously down from the direction of Stonehenge. Romanov was riding on the elephant's neck, and in the seat swaying on her back, leaning out anxiously on either side, were Mam and Dad. Grandad—my sane, mortal grandad Hyde—was riding with them, and so was Mrs. Candace.

“Magic has changed here, too,” Romanov remarked. The elephant stopped, and he slid down onto her bent-up leg. “We got held up in the changes,” he said as he reached the slushy ground. “Sorry about that.”

He helped the others down. While my parents were hugging me, Grandad had one arm around Toby and the other hand on Nick's shoulder. “What's up with you, lad?” At this, Romanov looked at Nick and moved in, too. They had him feeling better in moments, without my having to try using the changed magic. At least they got Nick's body right, but Grandad says it will take much longer to heal his mind. “Don't look so chagrined, Roddy,” Grandad said to me. “Romanov and I are used to working in changing conditions.” Then he got out of the way because the elephant trampled in and twined her trunk delightedly round Nick.

“I thought you were inside that dome when it collapsed!” I kept saying to my parents. “I'm so
glad
!”

Then I found Mrs. Candace beside me. She leaned on Dad's arm, looking terribly tired but still amazingly elegant. “Your mother has been telling me how much she wishes you didn't have to live with the Progress,” she said, staring into my eyes with her own peculiarly luminous green-blue ones. She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I wondered when I first saw you, and now I'm sure. You are my next Lady of Governance, child. You must come and live with me and learn the ways of it.”

Mam let out a wail at that. “That wasn't what I meant! Oh, I
knew
something like this would happen if I let my horrible old father get his hands on her!”

“It's all right, Mam,” I said. “He only showed me how to find out about things.”

Mrs. Candace said, “It will take me some weeks to recover from that ghastly cavern, or whatever it was, and to get used to this shift in the magics. She can come to me in a month's time.”

“Fine,” said Dad, before Mam could raise more outcries. He was looking around, sniffing the air and frowning. “I'd better join the Court at once. Unless I get to my weather table soon, there's going to be a serious shift in the climate.”

“I think your weather table's still here,” I said. “I can see the lorry where they usually pack it.”

“Excellent!” said my father, and he dashed over to the lorry at once, sliding and sending up showers of slush in his hurry.

Grandad Hyde had seen his own car standing where Dora had left it. He rubbed his hands together with pleasure. “If she's left the keys in, fine,” he said. “If not, it'll have to be Magid methods. Nick, Toby, come along. Let's get to London before nightfall if we can.”

Nick untwined the elephant's trunk from his neck regretfully. “I wish I could come with you,” he said to Romanov. “I want to be a free operator like you.”

Romanov looked thoroughly taken aback. Then he shrugged. “If you want. I'm going to be taking my son with me anyway.”

He nodded at Grundo. Grundo, in that way that he has, had somehow caused everyone to forget him. He had collected a heap of things that people had dropped—combs, hairpins, paper, pens, coins, some glowing rowanberries, and even a fiery little brooch that must have been dropped by the Count of Blest's people—and he was busy building them into a long, wavery tower. Actually, he had made it rather beautiful, like a mad sculpture. “I can work with this new magic,” he said when he saw us looking at him. “It's much easier.”

Grandad Hyde frowned down at Grundo's artwork. “I don't think you
can
take him, you know,” he said to Romanov. “I suspect he's likely to be the next Merlin. This one won't last long. Not up to strength, really, you know.”

Romanov frowned, too. “Only if he
wants
the post,” he said. “They wanted me for the Merlin once, and I know how
that
feels.” He and Grandad directed their frowns at one another. It was quite a clash. “I'm not leaving him with Sybil, whatever you want,” Romanov said. “Where
is
Sybil, by the way?”

“Gone,” Nick said. “Ap Nud took her.”

Romanov tried to look sober and sorry, but his face bent into wholly new zigzags of relief and delight, however he tried. “Well, well,” he settled for saying. “Then I'll have to take him, but we can visit you—once a month, if you want.”

Grandad was not pleased, but he had no chance to say so because the square brown car came slewing and sliding across the grass then to take Mrs. Candace home. Old Sarum was at its wheel. He scowled and scrunched his face up at me. That made me laugh. I don't know if Old Sarum meant to do this, but he made me feel a lot better about being separated from everyone I knew. I went and helped Mrs. Candace politely into the car.

“I'll be along to collect you next month, child,” she said before she was driven away.

Grandad was just rounding on Romanov again to restart their argument when Stonehenge suddenly became full of people. The first one to slip between the stones and start toward us was the real Merlin, grinning shyly at Romanov. But Heppy was close behind him. We heard her parrot voice even before we saw her.

“But this is the
Henge
! How does he suppose we're going to get home from here, Jude, that's what I want to know! It's miles away!”

The Izzys were only too evidently with her. “Oh, I love that Merlin!” their voices trilled. “His chin is so
weak
!”

My grandfather was galvanized. “Quick!” he said. “Into my car, Nick, Toby, Grundo, Roddy—all of you. I'll have Roddy for the month, Annie. Can you stay and sort things out here?” he asked Romanov over one shoulder as he rushed to the car. “Come and fetch whichever boys you want in a month's time.”

That was typical Grandad, getting his own way in spite of everything. Romanov actually laughed as we drove away.

It was typical, too, that Grandad didn't scold Dora—though I think he should have done—when she crept into his house late that night. And it was equally typical that as soon as he saw how upset Nick was, he immediately started us on what he calls The Grand Project, which is for me and Nick to write down exactly what happened to both of us. He says he needs it for Magid reasons. So for this last month we have done just that, me in the dining room and Nick up in the room he shares with Grundo. I think it might have made Nick feel a little better. And there isn't much else to do, because Dad has changed the weather to rain and rain and yet more rain. Toby and Grundo have been quite bored now that they have got all the salamanders put where they can be dry. And it has taken me the entire month to write everything down, but I think I've finished now—which is just as well, because I can hear Mrs. Candace's voice in the hall. I feel
so
nervous.