NINETEEN

Rupert Venables continued

If Janine was disconcerted, you could have fooled me. She stood in the doorway of the lift and stared pleasantly down at Maree. “Dear, dear,” she said. “What can have happened to my niece?”

She was still wearing that bloodstained jumper. I noticed it the way you do notice things, vividly, when something this shocking happens. The apparent blood, from this close, resolved itself into a cluster of moistly shiny red strawberries. I tore my eyes from them and met Janine’s. “I don’t know what happened to Maree exactly,” I said. “You tell me.”

A perfectly horrible little smile flitted on Janine’s face, gleeful and secretly gloating. It took in my blistered face as well as Maree’s blanched little figure. “I’ve no idea,” she said. “But I think she ought to go to her room and lie down.”

Janine clearly thought she was quite safe. She had no notion, of course, that I knew she had been on Thalangia. But surely, I thought, seeing Nick was with me would show her—Here I began to wonder what mixture of feelings Nick must be having. If it was bad for me, meeting Janine like this, it was surely ten times worse for Nick. I looked round for him and there was no sign of him. He seemed to have vanished into thin air. But Will was standing a few feet away, staring at Maree in evident horror. And Maree knew Janine. Her bleached hands were flailing limply and she was trying to say something.

Janine, still smiling, cocked her face sweetly down towards Maree. “What’s the poor little thing trying to say, do you think?”

Seeing Will standing there made me feel better. I wanted to hurl accusations at Janine. I wanted to show her I knew what she had done. But it would have done no good. She knew as well as I did that there was no kind of Earthly evidence to connect her with Maree’s condition. Instead, I leant forward over the handle of the chair, across Maree’s head. “She’s trying to tell you,” I said, “that someone has sewn six rabbit’s testicles to your right breast.”

Janine’s head jerked upright. She stared at me for a second, obviously wondering if I had said what she thought she heard. Then she settled for looking puzzled and distant, turned and stalked gracefully away.

Will pounced forward. “My God, Rupe! What the hell—?”

“Get in the lift with us,” I said, “and I’ll tell you.” I looked round again for Nick, but he was still nowhere to be seen. It was the deftest vanishing trick I had ever come across. I just hoped he would turn up again. Will and I crowded into the lift beside the wheelchair and its drooping white occupant, and I gave Will a summary of events as we hummed slowly upwards.

“Lord!” he said. “No wonder you look such a mess! And I’ve never heard even you be that rude to a strange woman before! I couldn’t think what—and what about the centaur, Rob?”

“We’ll get it out of him somehow,” I said. “But I think you saved his life by running into him. He was obviously supposed to take them back to Thalangia with him.”

“But what are you going to do about Janine and this man White?” Will wanted to know. “There’s no evidence against them except Nick’s and she’s his mother!”

“I know,” I said. “And I’m going to have to send Nick to Babylon with Maree—if he turns up—so we could lose that evidence anyway.” I looked up at the indicator and found we were passing the fourth floor. Nearly there. “Will, tell me your Babylon verse. I need it.”

“You certainly will,” he said. “It’s the central one.” And he recited rapidly:

“How hard is the road to Babylon?

As hard as grief or greed.

What do I ask for when I get there?

Only for what you need.

If you travel in need and travel light

You can get there by candle-light.”

The lift stopped and the door opened as he finished. I pushed Maree out, saying, “Thanks. Yes. That sounds central.” As I said it, the other lift opened and Nick stepped out. He was looking so shut-away and non-committal that all I liked to say to him was “Oh, there you are. Come to my room and I’ll get us something to eat from Room Service.”

“I’m not very hungry,” he said.

“Maybe you aren’t,” Will told him cheerfully, “but I am. I can eat anything you can’t manage.”

That was the right approach with Nick, seemingly. Nick came along beside us as I trundled Maree round the first mirrored corner and along the corridor beyond. The node had been tampered with again. We turned another corner and still had not reached my room. It occurred to me to wonder if this happened whenever Gram White made transit to or from Thalangia. I asked Will.

“Not only that,” he said, “someone else has been at it too. Your room’s been further off every time I’ve been up here.”

This time it was so far off that we reached Nick’s room first. Nick said he wanted to get a sweater and would catch us up.

“We’ll wait for you,” Will and I said, almost in chorus. We didn’t want to lose him again. “And where’s Maree’s room?” I asked while Nick unlocked his door.

Nick pointed to the next door along. “There. Why?”

I didn’t like to say that Janine had suggested I take Maree there. “Just want to check something,” I said. “Where would Maree keep her key?”

“Top right-hand pocket of her jacket,” Nick said. I could tell by his deadpan face that he guessed it had something to do with his mother.

Wincing rather, I got the key from Maree’s pallid pocket and let myself into a hotel room much smaller than mine, filled with a surprising number of possessions. At a rough guess, I would have said it contained all Maree’s worldly goods. There was a grey and skinny teddy bear on the bed that looked as if it had been carried around by its neck for years, the vet-case on top of a heap of things on the floor, a computer set up on the dressing-table and several boxes of much-read-looking books. And, as I had suspected, something felt wrong. Something felt very wrong, but I couldn’t tell where it was. But it felt so wrong that when Will started innocently pushing Maree in after me, I told him to stay out and, at all costs, to keep Maree outside. Will sensed the wrongness too. He nodded and backed out. I climbed about among the heaps, unavailingly searching.

“Try the computer,” Nick said from the doorway. He was engulfed in a big furry blue sweater and shivering as if he had only just now noticed how cold and shocked he had been. “She uses her computer a lot.”

I climbed over a book box and turned on the computer. As the screen lit, I did almost without thinking what I always do with any computer of my own, and put out a scan for viruses, Magid-style. The result was startling. VIRUS OPERATES, the screen told me. The space behind filled with dry clustering twigs, more and more of them, until the screen looked like dense undergrowth, and there was a sense of something looking out at me from among them. The twigs grew thorns, vicious ones, and with their burgeoning came every feeling of frustration, despair and humiliation I had ever known—and some I had not, particularly the humiliations. And it caught me.

I stood and stared at the clustering twigs, writhing with several kinds of shame, thinking I might as well give up and go home and die. I was no good. Nothing was any good. Nothing was even worth fighting for because everything I touched was going to go wrong. Nothing—

An exclamation from Nick snapped me out of it. He was pointing to the bed. A shadowy thornbush seemed to be growing upon it. It was sending spiteful sprays up through the pillow, thrusting clumps of spines up through the duvet, and several spiky shoots were even pushing through the grey teddy bear. My shame and despair were wiped away by anger. So this was why Janine wanted Maree to lie down! No doubt the original intention was to have left Maree stripped in the lane for Dakros to find along with the other murdered heirs—and she must have been quite annoyed, Janine, to find I had retrieved Maree. So she had suggested this instead, knowing that in Maree’s present condition these spectral thorns would finish her off. Somehow it angered me particularly to see them attacking that evidently loved teddy bear.

“It’s the Thornlady,” Nick said. “Maree had dreams about it. That’s why we did the Witchy Dance in Bristol. To get rid of it.”

“It wouldn’t have worked,” I said. “It’s a damned goddess. Her computer’s rigged so that every time Maree used it the manifestations get stronger.” My respect for Maree increased, now I knew she must have been fighting this all the time.

“Can you get rid of it?” Nick asked me.

“Yes, but it’ll be a long job,” I said. Any kind of theurgy and workings connected with deities always take long strenuous hours to undo. Sometimes you have to request the help of another god. I sighed. This was another item in the stack of things accumulating for me to do tomorrow. “We’ll just lock it up for now and keep well away.”

We did that. I felt drained. Those thorns were powerful. We went on down the corridor and round another corner, with me only wanting to get to my room, clean up and rest before starting on the next part. And there was my room at last. There was something stuck to the middle of the door, just below the number.

“Yuk!” said Will. “That wasn’t there when I last came up.”

It was one of the foulest of the foul sigils. It made me frankly retch. Its foulness was such that it was perceptible to Nick and even to Maree too. Nick’s shivering increased to shudders. Maree gave a mumbling cry and tried to cover her face. I had no doubt that Janine had just been putting the thing here before she came down in the lift. I clenched my teeth and went to get rid of it.

“No, not you,” Will said, shoving me aside. “It’s aimed personally at you, you fool!” He scooped at the sigil with both hands—hands that were used to scooping farmyard muck every day—and almost instantly threw the double handful down on the carpet with a yelp, where he stamped on it and ground it in with his substantial shoe. For a second or so there was a truly filthy smell. “As I said—yuk!” Will said, wiping his hands hard on his coat.

There was now a smooth rounded hollow in my door, but at least it was a clean hollow. I unlocked the door and we all trooped in. Will had left lights on. I could see Rob as a large mound under my duvet and a spread of fine black hair on my pillow, apparently asleep. Once I had made sure that he was breathing and unharmed by the foulness that had been on my door, I quite deliberately left him alone. I simply pushed Maree in her wheelchair to where Rob could see her if he deigned to open the one beautiful black-fringed eye that was visible, and went to the phone.

“Hamburgers and chips all round?” I asked Will.

“Two cheeseburgers for me,” said my brother. Years of the two of us winding up Simon paid off. I didn’t even have to wink at him. He went on innocently, “What do centaurs eat? They’re all vegetarians, aren’t they?”

“I don’t know,” I said, which was true. “Perhaps I’d better order a vegeburger and a bit of lettuce for him.”

“Vegeburgers are full of additives—could do damage to his stomach—you’d better not,” Will said callously. “But on the other hand the meat in most hamburgers could be horse.”

Here Nick tumbled to what was going on and nearly gave the game away by laughing. Will and I both glared at him. I said anxiously, “So he’s faced with a choice of two things he can’t eat. I don’t think I’d better order any food for him at all. He seems to be asleep anyway.”

Will capped this with, “There’s probably nothing on Earth he can eat, you know. He’d better not have coffee, and I’m sure milk’s bad for him. Even water’s full of harmful chemicals.”

Here Rob could take no more. He rose up on one elbow, looking surprisingly healthy considering what he had been through. “Oh please!” he said. “I’m very hungry. Isn’t there really anything I can eat or drink?”

“That depends,” I said. “Do you eat meat?”

“I love it,” Rob said frankly. “And cheese and bread, and I’d even eat lettuce. And I do drink milk.”

“All right,” I said. “Cheeseburgers, chips and coffee all round then.”

I picked up the phone, leaving Rob confronting Maree and, beyond her, Nick staring gravely and wonderingly at Rob. I took my time over the order, which was not difficult to do, since the Room Service waiter I spoke to showed signs of stress and kept asking me to repeat things. “And can you assure me, sir,” he asked, “that the member of staff who delivers this meal will be spared the sight of—er—eccentric costumes?” I looked at Rob, who was very clearly trying not to look at Maree and as a result kept meeting Nick’s eye, and assured the man that everyone in my room was perfectly normal. “And can you give exact directions, sir, as to the whereabouts of room 555?” the harassed man continued. “Staff have unaccountably got lost tonight and we are trying to avoid—er, further complaints.”

Here Rob tried to solve his problems by lying down again and pulling the duvet over his face. As I wanted him to remain off balance, I was forced to turn from the phone and ask, “Rob, do you eat hay?”

“Hay?” Rob said, rising up aghast.

“One bale or two?” I asked.

“What?” cried Rob and Room Service almost simultaneously.

“Sorry,” I said into the phone. “We convention people have a strange sense of humour. Tell the staff member it was round three corners from the lift to room 555 when we came here just now.”

I turned from the phone and pulled up a chair so that I could sit facing Rob, beside Maree. “Right,” I said. “We’ll have to wait for the food, so you can answer me a few questions while we wait.”

“I’ll be happy to do that,” Rob answered warily.

“I doubt it,” I said. “I’m going to want you to answer each question in one word only. Who sent you here?”

“Knarros,” Rob said, wide-eyed, sincere and rather hurt.

“And who told Knarros to send you?”

“I don’t really see Knarros taking orders from any—”

“Rob,” I said. “One word. Who?”

“I—I can’t tell you,” Rob said. His face paled and he began looking so unwell that, despite what Stan had said, I felt a brute.

“OK,” I said. “Who were you sent to fetch? One word.”

“I…” Rob’s voice failed. He slumped back on to my pillow.

“Not me?”

“No,” Rob admitted, and his voice failed further. His eyes closed.

“Perhaps you’d like to tell us, Nick?” I said.

Nick was now lying face-down on the carpet. He looked up at me ruefully. “Maree,” he said. “Rob said his uncle had to talk to her.”

“Not you as well?” I asked him.

Nick shook his head. “But I wasn’t going to miss something like that.”

Janine, I thought, couldn’t know her son very well if she thought she could keep him away simply by not inviting him. But this sort of ignorance seems to be a failing in most mothers. My own mother obstinately fails to notice the queer things I do as a Magid—the queer things all three of her sons do.

“The conversation you and Rob and Maree had in the lift must have been quite interesting,” I said.

Nick and Rob looked at one another. There was both exasperation and complicity in the look. “I hadn’t thought you’d noticed,” Nick said irritably.

“Like to tell me about it?” I asked.

There was a fairly long silence, broken only by a mutter from Maree. In it, I picked out the words “tell him,” but I had no idea if she was instructing Nick to come clean or if the words were in fact “don’t tell him.” But it proved she was attending. That impressed me. Even allowing for my accidental working, she was showing far more resilience than I expected.

At length, Rob looked at me limpidly and said, “Well, I told Nick we were cousins of course. But I thought I was going to pass out—”

“And there wasn’t time to say very much before you two hauled the lift back down,” Nick cut in quickly.

“Did Rob explain how a centaur and a human could conceivably be cousins?” I asked. “It seems a little unlikely.”

“Oh, by adoption of course,” Rob said. His beautiful features blazed with innocent sincerity. “My Uncle Knarros adopted Nick’s mother as his sister.”

“When was that?” I asked him. I needed also to ask why, but I knew Rob would not tell me that.

“Fifteen years ago, before she left the Empire,” Rob replied.

“So Janine is definitely a citizen of Koryfos?” I said.

Rob nodded, eager to oblige. “She was born in Thalangia.”

This, from a centaur, would be the truth. We had got somewhere. But I couldn’t see us getting much further with Nick there, not if I was to have Nick’s help with Maree. Will was looking at me anxiously, trying to convey this. All at once, I felt deathly tired. I nodded at Will, suggesting he had a go at Rob now and, fetching clean clothes out of a drawer, I went into the bathroom to wash and change. That felt a great deal better, even with the front of my hair missing. I put salve on my bums and came out.

Will had made no headway, I could see at once. Rob was still shining with sincerity. Nick looked sulky. I went to the cocktail fridge and sorted myself out a little bottle of brandy. “Want some, Will?”

Will is never a great drinker. “Not with a big working coming up,” he said, “but you look as if you could use it.”

I turned round after the first heavenly, pungent, warming swig, wishing I could confront Rob with the death of Knarros—he ought to be told anyway—but with Nick there I thought it safest to confront him with Maree instead.

“Do you know what’s happened to her?” I said, pointing to the wheelchair.

Rob’s eyes reluctantly travelled to the little bent, blanched figure. “She’s been stripped, hasn’t she? I heard they go pale like that.”

“That is correct,” I said. “Maree was stripped. Furthermore, the gate opened into the heart of a volcano. And that wasn’t an accident. The other half of her was destroyed.” I took another swig from the little bottle, watching Rob across it, hoping this might make a dent in his huge, false innocence. Perhaps it had. He was looking pale and ill again, but this time I thought it was genuine.

Unfortunately, the Room Service waiter arrived just then, with praiseworthy promptness, bearing a vast tray loaded with cheeseburgers, an outsize basket of chips and an enormous pot of the hotel’s excellent coffee. I gave the guy a large tip. The way the node was behaving, he deserved it, although I shuddered a little at how much this extended weekend was costing me. When I had leisure to look, at Rob again, the colour was back in his brown cheeks and he had the slightly smug look of someone who thinks he has successfully wriggled out of an unpleasant situation.

I haven’t finished with you yet, my lad! I thought.

But for that time we were all preoccupied with food, even Nick, who, as I expected, found the smell of it irresistible and tore into the chips. Maree, to everyone’s distress, seemed unable to eat. Nick induced her to drink some sugary coffee at least, leaning over her with surprising patience, coaxing and encouraging, while Will and Rob cheerfully demolished Maree’s share of the food. It was quite a sight to see Rob sitting up and munching into a cheeseburger, his dark eyes sparkling, and a hoof or so trailing out from under my duvet. Centaurs not only recover quickly: they need to eat a lot.

So too, it seems, do quack chicks. I had clean forgotten them and I couldn’t think what was happening when two fluffy yellow bundles emerged from under my bed, cheeping urgently. Will fed them pieces of bread and a chip or so. And their effect on Maree was quite startling. She sat up, leant forward and followed the little birds with her eyes, avidly. There was even a faint smile on her pinched, colourless face. Of course, I remembered, she was going to be a vet. She had clearly been led to it by a love of small creatures.

Before she could lapse again into mumbling semi-life, I cleared the tray away and tipped every scrap and crumb left on to the carpet in front of the wheelchair. The chicks sped eagerly to the heap, and Maree leant over, watching.

“Right,” I said. “Time for serious stuff. Rob, we are going to perform one of the deep secret workings here and you are going to witness it perforce. I must ask you to swear not to speak of it to anyone.”

“You could put a geas on him,” Will suggested.

“Ah, please!” said Rob. “I swear not to say a word. I’ll make myself sleep if you like.”

“No need, as long as you swear,” I told him.

He swore, formally and devoutly, by the name of Koryfos the Great. Will winked at me. “Got enough candles, Rupe? Mine are all down in the Groundraker. Shall I get them?”

Just as Maree seemed to travel everywhere with her vet-case, I never go anywhere without a bag ready packed with the things I might need for a working. I fetched it from the stand and checked. I had eighteen plain white candles and a stack of wire stands for them. “These are enough,” I told Will. “I don’t want anyone leaving this room until we’re through. There are at least two powerful hostiles out there. You start setting up the strongest wards you can. I’ll find the road and explain to Nick.”

We both stood with our backs to the door, concentrating. I could feel Will building something so thick and strong that I began to feel as if I was working in a vault. He was doing it very carefully, separating us from the node and keeping us that way. I was grateful for that. It meant that I could put my entire mind to thinking through the Babylon verse that was mine, my piece of the deep secret.

Where is the road to Babylon?

Right beside your door.

Can I walk that road whenever I want?

No, three times and no more …

Nick and Rob were staring at us with nearly identical awed respect. Nick suddenly said throatily, “I need to pee. Is that all right?”

“Get it over with now,” I said. “Rob too. Go on.”

Nick sped to the bathroom. Rob slid all four hooves carefully to the floor, tossed aside the duvet and heaved upright. “Yow!” he said. His hand clapped itself to Maree’s numerous stitchings along his side. Maree’s eyes turned to him with blurred professional interest. She was definitely more alive than she had been. She watched Rob as he tottered gingerly around the quack chicks and across to the bathroom. I supposed there was just space in there for him. Nick could help him. I turned my mind back to the rhyme again.

The road was there in the room, of course, more or less at my feet. It always would be, for me or anyone, since it was, in some sense, life itself. This Babylon working was old, old basic magic. I ignored Nick coming back, and then Rob, and paced out the part of it that lay inside the room. It lay in an odd slantwise way. I had to move Maree’s wheelchair against the bed in order to follow it right. When I had it, I came back towards the door, putting down a candle in its holder to the right of it, every few steps. The first two candles were only a step apart, the others had to be more, and then more, until there were nine laid in a line. Then I went back again, putting another candle opposite the first ones, until there were nine again that side, a foot or so away from the first nine. Then I went back to the door and looked to see if I had it right.

I had. Although I had put the candles down in two parallel lines, from where I stood at the door the lane of candles appeared to narrow sharply towards the further end. The illusion of perspective made the room seem suddenly twice the size.

I beckoned Nick over. “Listen carefully,” I said to him. “You and Maree are going on a journey. She has to walk. That’s why you have to go with her to help her. I can’t tell you much about the journey, because nobody knows much. But I know it won’t be easy. You’ll have your work cut out to get her there—and back. It’s just as important to get her back here as it is to get her there. Have you got that?” Nick nodded. “When you get wherever the end of the journey is,” I said, “it may look like a city, or a tower, or something quite other. We don’t know. But you’ll know when you get there. When you do, you are each allowed to ask for one thing only, and that thing, has to be something you need very much. Make sure Maree asks to have the other half of herself restored. Keep telling her. You can ask for anything you like for yourself, but make sure Maree asks for the other half of herself or you’ll have wasted the working. OK?”

Nick nodded again, very seriously. “And we walk down there?” He pointed to the double row of unlit candles. He sounded as if he was trying hard not to seem incredulous.

“When the candles are lit,” I said, “you should be able to see the road. I hope so, but I’m not sure. This isn’t a thing we do every day. There is one other very important thing, though. You have to complete your journey—there and back—while the candles are still burning.”

“That’s only a few hours,” Nick said. “Isn’t it?”

“I’ll be working hard to force them to burn as slowly as possible,” I said. “But, yes, you can’t afford to hang about. Try to keep going, whatever happens. Have you got all that? Are you ready?”

Nick nodded. I went and helped Maree out of the wheelchair, small and tepid and light in my hands. She stood all right. She even walked when I tugged at her, but she went in a slow, tremulous shuffle, with her head bent limply sideways, watching the quack chicks still. Nick took hold of her firmly by her other arm.

“Come on, Maree,” he said. “You’ve got to walk. You’ve got to fight. You know how strong you can be when you get fierce. Get fierce—come on.”

Maree responded to this. Her head went round to look at Nick and I saw her lips mumble what seemed to be the word “fierce.” One hand made a small, vestigial gesture, trying to push her glasses up her nose.

“That’s it!” Nick said. He led her up beside the door, to the start of the two lines of candles. “What do we do now?”

“Will and I light the candles,” I said, “and we’ll say the words while we do. You join in with the part you know. And the moment you see the rest of the road, start walking. Ready?”

Nick, with Maree draped against him, gave a forced smile. “Going, ready or not.”

Will and I hurried to the far end of the line of candles. We both had petrol lighters. Candles are harder to light with those, but you do all old magics by striking flint with steel if you can. As soon as we had the first two candles alight, we went on to the next pair and began speaking the well-known part of the secret. Like all old spells, it contains its own instructions.

“How many miles to Babylon?

Three score miles and ten.

Can I get there by candle-light?

Yes, and back again.

If your feet are speedy and light

You can get there by candle-light.”

Rob was saying the words too, I noticed. Interesting. Maree seemed to be murmuring them along with Nick. Nick spoke them out with a will, until I saw him realize that he was going to have to coax Maree along through seventy miles—no, a hundred and forty miles—before these candles burnt out. He faltered a little and stared at me in some horror, but he kept on speaking the verse.

I spoke my own verse next. That seemed to me to be where it should come.

“Where is the road to Babylon?

Right beside your door.

Can I walk that way whenever I want?

No, three times and no more.

If you mark the road and measure it right

You can go there by candle-light.”

Halfway through this verse, Nick’s eyes widened. I could see him focus on something well beyond the walls of the room. He pulled at Maree and they both began slowly to walk forward, between the two rows of candles. We moved towards them, striking light from increasingly hot lighters, lighting a candle, moving on. I said Stan’s verse next.

“How do I go to Babylon?

Outside of here and there.

Am I crossing a bridge or climbing a hill?

Yes, both before you’re there.

If you follow outside of day and night

You can be there by candle-light.”

By that time we were on the last two candles. Even at Maree’s slow shuffle, she and Nick had nearly reached the wall of the room. Will struck a light. It burnt him and his face pursed up with pain as he said his verse.

“How hard is the road to Babylon?

As hard as grief or greed.

What do I ask for when I get there?

Only for what you need.

If you travel in need and travel light

You can get there by candle-light.”

We lit the last two candles, both stifling exclamations of pain from hot lighters, crouched in the awkward space beside the door. From there, to my awe and relief, we could see the road. It wound into undulating dark distance beyond the two candles at the end, and it seemed to be made of, or picked out in, faint grey light. There was a sketch of a countryside out there, but awesome because it was on a different plane from the carpet and curtains surrounding it. As Stan’s verse stated, it was entirely outside here and now. I was relieved, because the old magic had worked and, thanks to Will, worked without so much as nudging the node, and because it is so much easier to hold open a road you can actually see. And whatever plane it was on, the physical presence of the place out there was undeniable. There was a sharp downwards slope in the road just beyond the two final candles. Nick and Maree were going down it, only visible from Maree’s head upwards as they went. This meant they were going out of earshot. I was glad. There was still one more verse to say and I hoped they would not hear it. Rob again joined in as Will and I recited it.

“How long is the way to Babylon?

Three score years and ten.

Many have gone to Babylon

But few come back again.

If your feet are nimble and light

You can be back by candle-light.”

Nothing could have been less nimble and light than Maree’s faltering feet. It seemed an age before the two of them came into view again in the dark distance, going slowly up the next looping incline in the dim grey road, a large dark figure and a small bleached one, the large figure most gently and solicitously helping the small one along.

“Whew!” said Will, sucking his sore fingers. “How come,” he asked Rob, “you know that last verse too?”

“It’s a nursery rhyme,” said Rob. “Everyone on Thalangia knows those two verses.”

“But you are mage-trained, aren’t you?” Will said.

“Yes,” Rob admitted.

He would have to be, I thought, for Knarros to have sent him here. And I was very glad that we on Earth only know just the one verse. Nick would have been far less willing to go.