TWO RODDY & NICK

RODDY

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.

Everything was very misty, too, and statue-still, with the normal summer colors looking unclear and rather dark, as if they were reflected in deep, thick water. None of it smelled quite right. And there were none of the transparent folks tumbling in the hedges in the wind from the car.

When the road brought us into sight of the green line of the Ridgeway Hills, running along the skyline to our left, those hills were nearly hidden by low, gray, moving clouds that formed big, puffy blue-gray waves, which were all cascading and rushing westward faster than the car. By the time the road brought us nearer to the hills, we were in those clouds. Hot white vapors almost hid the road. Dora was forced to slow right down, so that we could actually see the mist surging across us in waves, galloping into the west.

We were almost at the right place by then. I could feel the strange tug and pull of it. I was fairly sure it was the same place that Grundo and I had felt on our way to London. Grundo, Toby, and I all cried out, “Here it is! We’re nearly there!” and I said to Dora, “If you could take the next turning left …”

“Oh, no,” she said.

This was where it got really frightening.

I said, “But this is truly the best place. Romanov said. I think it’s a wood—”

“Oh, no,” Dora said again. “It’s much too near where Toby’s father lives. I can’t take you there.”

“But you have to, Mum!” Toby cried out. “I went to them—I told them in the wood that I’d go back and call them out. They’re waiting for me. I promised them!”

Dora said, “And I promised I would do at least this one thing for the group. They’ll be very displeased if I don’t.” And she kept driving.

“Oh, please!” Toby said. I had never known him so upset. Tears were bursting out of his eyes and rolling down his shirt. I remembered, with a quiver of fright in my stomach, that Dora had always been at least half dotty, and Toby knew she was.

“Where do you think you’re driving us, then?” Nick said belligerently to Dora. He was in the front seat, and he more or less turned and shouted in Dora’s face.

“Stonehenge,” Dora said. “It’ll be quite all right then. They promised me.”

I almost relaxed at that. Stonehenge was one of the other four places Romanov had told me. But Nick said suspiciously, “Who told you to take us to Stonehenge? Toby’s dad?”

“And Mrs. Blantyre,” Dora said placidly. “And the sweet young man they get their orders from. I think he said he was the Merlin, but I’m not sure. He said that this was the least I could do. I was quite worried yesterday when I couldn’t find any of you, because I didn’t want to let them down, did I?”

“Mum!” Toby shouted. “I made a promise, too! Stop the car!” He stood up and gave Dora’s shoulder a shake, but the car swerved so violently that he sat down again quickly.

Nick tried cunning then. He said, “Dora, how about we stop the car and keep Toby’s promise first? Then we can go on to Stonehenge and keep yours.”

Dora shook her head. “No, dear. Please don’t try any Oriental blandishments on me. I do know when someone’s trying to get round me.” And we bucketed on, with waves of mist rolling across us and away in front of us.

Nick and Toby both shot me desperate looks. Nick leaned over and tried to put on the handbrake—he says this is the only control that’s the same as an Earth car—but he couldn’t do it, even heaving with both hands. “What have you done to this?” he asked Dora.

“Nothing,” she said, “but Mrs. Blantyre did promise me she would make sure we got there. She’s clever, isn’t she? Now, do be good. It’s so hard to see in all this fog.”

Grundo leaned over the side to see if it was possible to jump out, but we were going far too fast. He sat down and looked at me. “It may be all right,” I said. “Stonehenge was another of Romanov’s places.”

“Stonehenge is the place,” Dora said happily. “The King is going to abdicate there today.” As she said this, the roof of the car rolled back over us and we found that none of the doors would open. We roared onward in a warm box surrounded in fog, and there seemed no way of stopping Dora that wouldn’t crash the car. All my flower files were useless, useless, because the hurt lady had never known about cars, and I had never known much myself either.

I know the others tried things. Grundo tried an illusion of people in the road ahead, but he was upset, so they came out behind the car. Shadowy people chased us through the fog for miles. My idea was to give Dora cramp and a crick in her neck, but either this Mrs. Blantyre of hers had thought of that or Dora just ignored what I did to her. Toby tried an illusion of the controls bursting into flame, but Dora knew it was him.

“Toby,” she said reproachfully, “don’t play tricks while I’m driving. It’s not safe.”

Toby sighed, and the fire vanished. And Nick …

NICK

Yes, well, I called that dragon.

I didn’t do it just because I was scared spitless—although I was. The sight of the silly, dreamy smile on Dora’s face while she refused to stop driving was one of the scariest things that had happened so far. But as soon as she mentioned the Merlin, I knew it was serious for a lot more reasons than just my own safety. I thought through the way Joel had talked, and how urgent Romanov had been, and what Roddy had told me, and I thought I’d better do what I could, and do it before we got out of range.

I shut my eyes and concentrated, the way Maxwell Hyde had tried to teach me. I’d never done it right before. I suppose I’d lacked the incentive. It surprised the hell out of me when I found I was sort of floating beside the hillside, where the turf rolled back to show the dragon’s vast white head. We were swamped in mist, both of us. His big green eye was open and turning this way and that to watch the waves of cloud rushing across him, but the eye turned and looked at me when I got there, even though I was really sitting in a car speeding away from him.

“YOU AGAIN,” he said. Just like Romanov. “HAVE YOU COME TO CALL ME OUT THIS TIME?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s time. I summon you.”

“YOU LEFT IT A BIT LATE,” he said, “IN MY OPINION. VERY WELL. IT WILL TAKE ME AWHILE TO WORK LOOSE. AND REMEMBER WHAT I SAID. I DON’T LIKE BEING CALLED. PEOPLE ARE GOING TO GET HURT. YOU ARE GOING TO GET HURT. NOW GO AWAY.”

I went away, fast. I flipped back into the car, shaking all over, and found we were on a stretch of road that was not in fog any longer. Dora was fair batting along it. She had her foot right down most of the rest of the way. It was frightening.

RODDY

It was thoroughly frightening. It was also very hot, too, as if the fine weather that my father had never been allowed to cancel was getting out of hand somehow. With the heat there was the sour, disinfectant-like smell you get when magic is being done. At first I assumed it was coming from the spells that were holding the car doors shut, but then, slowly, I realized that it was coming from everywhere. It was outside, not simply in the car. And finally I realized what it was. It was the smell of quantities of magic being moved. It was the way things smelled when all the magic in the countryside was being pulled, and sucked, and dragged, into one place.

“Oh, gods!” I said. Everyone except Dora looked at me anxiously. “It’s the magic,” I said. “Someone’s pulling in all the magic of Blest.”

“So how do we stop it?” said Nick.

He said this as if he really thought it was possible—build a dam, suck in the opposite direction—I don’t know what he thought, but it made Dora drive even faster, as if she was afraid Nick would really find some way to deal with the magic, huge as it was, unless we got to Stonehenge quickly. I could feel her adding in a speed-the-journey spell. It was a variant of the fifth one in my Traveler’s Joy file, and it had a foreign feel, as if someone else had provided it for her. It was strong. We were on Salisbury Plain five minutes after Nick asked his question.

Bare green distances rushed by. And suddenly, in that way it has of turning up, unexpectedly small and indescribably massive, there was Stonehenge.

We bumped across the grass right beside the enormous stones of it, and Nick said, “There’s a lot more of it standing than there is on Earth.”

I hardly heard him. Too many other things grabbed my attention. I thought I caught a glimpse of Salisbury standing near one of the stones, just a sight of green rubber boots as we bumped past, and a flutter of ragged coat that might have been Old Sarum squatting beside the boots. But the main thing that held my attention was the great orderly jumble of cars, buses, and lorries parked downhill from the henge. And despite all I knew, I found myself thinking, Oh, good! We’ve caught up with the Progress at last!

What a stupid way to think! I told myself as Dora stopped the car. Every single person who might have been friendly to us was currently in a xanadu worlds away, shrouded in white spells of binding. As proof of this, the car was instantly surrounded by royal pages, who came running up while the car was still moving and pulled the doors open as soon as it stopped. They were Alicia’s lot, all the people of Alicia’s age whom I particularly did not like, and they stood in a close circle with official, polite looks on their faces—except that the polite looks were just slightly exaggerated, so that we knew it was a mass jeer, really.

“If you will come this way, please,” Alicia herself said, reaching in and hauling on my arm.

Her fingers dug, but I hardly noticed. We climbed out into such a storm of magic that it made me quite dazed. It set the hurt lady’s knowledge racing randomly through my brain: Purple Vetch: vortex; Goose Grass or Cleavers: bindings; Gorse: land and home magics; Woody Nightshade: spells of evil intent, death spells, and sacrifices; Foxglove: raising of power; and so many more that I went dizzy and could only see things around me as sick-colored shadows for a minute or so. Then my brain steadied on Purple Vetch, and I knew what was happening. We were at the center of a vortex here, where all the magic in Blest, and for worlds around Blest, was coming roaring and soundlessly howling inward to a spot right beside Stonehenge. I could feel it. I could see it, too, in the swirls of white cloud that marked the lines of force in the blue sky, winding and dragging inward to an icy spearpoint of power only yards away. I found I was bending sideways from it as Alicia hauled me politely toward it.

I hardly saw—but noticed all the same—a perfectly horrible woman leading Dora away, patting her and praising her as if she were a dog. “Good girl! Well done! Doesn’t it feel better now you’ve done what you owed your friends to do?” Poor, silly Dora. She was beaming and nodding and looking shamed, all at once.

Another thing I hardly saw, but noticed all the same, was the way the pages expertly cleared a path for us through the crowds of people gathered in a ring around the point of the vortex. Some were people I knew from Court, but most of them were folk I’d never seen before, a lot of them like the horrid woman praising Dora, and crowds of men with beards and dishonest faces—many of these had too much hair and golden disks on their chests in the manner of priests—and large numbers of men and women who struck me as like Dora: not quite sure what they were doing here.

When we reached the space in the center of the crowd, I hardly saw, but noticed all the same, that it was packed tight with the transparent folks. They had been pulled here by the magic, and now they were being drawn on for their own magic. Their hard-to-see bodies bumped aside to let us through, and bumped and blundered high into the air, until they were crushed together into the white lines of the vortex clouds, where they were borne rushing downward again. The space was full of their soundless screams and their dreadful anxiety. They were terrified and horrified, but wildly excited as well, as if they couldn’t help themselves.

There was more dreadful anxiety from the fringes of the crowd, but I couldn’t find who it was coming from. All I knew was that a lot of someones were there, more worried than I cared to think about.

In the center of the space was Sybil, dancing. Her big, square-toed feet were bare, and her green skirts were hauled halfway up her massive legs. She must have been dancing for hours. When she saw us, she shouted, “Hai!” and flung her arms up, and I saw great dark patches of sweat spreading from her armpits almost to her waist.

Two chairs had been put facing one another on the grass, about ten yards apart. The King sat in one, looking royal and expressionless, with Prince Edmund standing beside him. The two Archbishops stood behind the chair, wearing robes and miters. Each of them had a puzzled and slightly distant smile, as if they had no more idea than Dora what was going on but felt they ought to look benevolent all the same.

The Merlin sat in the other chair. False Merlin, I should say. Now I had met the real one, I could see that this one’s face was rattier and his hair fairer. But they were very alike. They both had the long neck and the big Adam’s apple and the same small, pointed face. Maybe this was what had put the idea of the conspiracy into this one’s head. But I had the feeling that he wasn’t pretending to be anyone except himself now. He was in plain brown robes that reeked of power, and he sat in the same pose as a saint in a statue. Sir James was standing to one side of him, looking smug in a smart suit. There was a big box on the other side of the false Merlin. In front of him was a large silver bucket—or maybe it was a cauldron—that smoked cold white smoke. This was where the point of the vortex of magic rested.

Grundo muttered beside me, “It would make more sense if they were inside Stonehenge. Why aren’t they?”

“They can’t. It won’t let them,” Nick answered, sort of absently. He was staring at the false Merlin as if he recognized him.

I glanced up at the gray huddle of stones beyond the crowds and saw that what Nick said was true. Stonehenge, in some strange way, was not really present. It seemed to have gone several layers of reality away from here. I think this is how it protects itself.

“He has to be Japheth,” Nick said. “That ratty look.”

Sybil rushed up to us and waved Alicia and the other pages aside. She finished the movement with her arms aloft again. “The ceremony can begin!” she shouted. “Our sacrifice is come among us!” In a big gust of sweat smell, she seized Grundo’s arm. “Now, you be good,” she said to him, “and we won’t hurt you more than we have to.”

Toby and I stared at her. Under the sweat, her face was like red sandpaper, and her eyes didn’t quite see anything, like a drunk person’s. She seemed to have no feeling for Grundo at all. Nick put his big hand over Sybil’s chubby one and wrenched it off Grundo’s arm. “Leave him!” he thundered out, glaring at Sybil. Sybil stared into air behind Nick and went on blindly grabbing at Grundo.

The false Merlin looked across at us.

He stared. Then he sprang up and came striding over to us, robes streaming, and pushed Alicia aside so that he could walk right up to Nick. He stood with his small pale face more or less nose to nose with Nick’s darker one. “You!” he said. “You’re supposed to be dead! You laughed at me!”

I have never seen such hatred. Spittle came out of the false Merlin’s lips with the strength of that hatred. He shook all over with it.

Nick tried to lean back, away from the flying spit. “What of it? You trod on an egg. It was funny.”

“What of it!” the false Merlin more or less screamed. “I’ll show you what of it! I’ve dreamed of you dead for ten years now! Today you are going to be dead—as painfully as I can manage!” He turned and said to Sybil, in a normal, cold voice, “Leave that child. This boy will give us far more power.” Then he went calmly back to his chair again.

Gods! I thought. He’s mad, quite mad! And Nick had said he was a murderer, too. I was terrified.

Sybil let go of Grundo. She seemed to be entirely under the false Merlin’s influence. She beckoned to Nick. At once a skein of transparent folks swooped from the vortex, surrounded Nick, and pulled him into the open space. I tried to stop them. I am entirely in a muddle as to whether this was what I would have done for anyone or whether it was because it was Nick. I do know my heart hammered in my throat and I put out my hands and tried to make the transparent folk stop. But your hands go through, or past, or slide off these people, and they were far too sunk in the storm of magic to heed me. I suppose to most of the onlookers it must have seemed as if Nick stumbled out into the open all by himself and then fell down on the grass.

“The sacrifice has presented himself!” Sybil proclaimed.

The false Merlin grinned. “So he has,” he said. His long, skinny arm reached out to the box beside his chair, where he flipped up a small flap in the top, groped a bit, and came up clutching a writhing bundle of salamanders. As the flap snapped down again, he reached forward and dipped the salamanders into the smoking silver bucket, quite slowly.

It was colder than the coldest ice in there. The soundless scream from those poor salamanders as they met that cold went through us all like an electric shock. But it went through Nick in a much worse way. His body became covered at once in hurrying silver ripples. The ripples chased and overlapped one another and formed silver leaf shapes, as if he were under the shallow sea with the sun on the waves. He was in obvious agony from it. He rolled about, trying to scream—or not being able to scream—and every time the ripples formed into a leaf shape this seemed to hurt him even more. He curled up, he uncurled, he flung his legs and arms about, much as the salamanders were doing in the false Merlin’s fist.

“There is really nothing like a willing sacrifice,” the false Merlin said. He looked to see if the salamanders were recovering a little and calmly dipped them in the smoking bucket again. Sir James—disgusting man!—leaned eagerly over to watch.

“Oh, he mustn’t!” Toby said despairingly. Possibly he was sorry for Nick, but being Toby, I suspect he was mostly feeling for those salamanders.

“No, he mustn’t, must he?” Grundo agreed.

Here the King seemed to notice what was going on, or some of it. He looked from Nick to the false Merlin and said, “What’s this? Eh?”

Toby was jigging about in his distress. Alicia jabbed him with her elbow and said, “Quiet. Don’t interrupt.”

“Your Majesty.” The false Merlin smiled and stood up, flourishing his handful of agonized, dying salamanders. “We are gathered here today to reinstate the old, true form of kingship. As has been explained to Your Majesty, yours are not the old, true forms. You make use of technology, and you have little or no dealings with the magic of Blest, and this has caused the old, true forms to warp and degenerate. You therefore intend to abdicate.” He looked sternly at the King. “Don’t you, Your Majesty?”

The King rubbed his hands across his face in a bewildered way. “Abdicate? Yes, I suppose we came here for something like that,” he agreed, but not as if he was at all sure. “What happens then?”

“Why, then we install a true King!” the false Merlin announced, as ringingly as such a reedy voice as his was able. “We ratify the Prince Edmund in your place, in the presence of both Archbishops and the priests of all other religions, and we seal it in proper form with the blood of a sacrifice.”

“Oh,” said the King. For a moment he looked startled and a little disgusted. Then he said placidly, “Very well, then. If Edmund …”

He stopped, distracted, because the false Merlin stooped and once more plunged the wretched salamanders into the white smokes of the bucket. This time they died. The shock was like the crack of a whip. The ripples were so thick over Nick that you could hardly see him, just a rolling, thrashing something under a moving silver web.

“Look here,” said Prince Edmund. He came out from behind the King to stand and stare at what could be seen of Nick. “I don’t think this is— I mean, is this a human sacrifice you’re talking about? I’m not sure— What happens then?”

Well, fancy this! I thought. Prince Edmund is a decent human being after all! But that was before Sybil came tramping up to him and laid her fat hand against his arm. “Your Highness,” she said, in the kind of low, tactful voice that everyone can hear, “if you are unwilling, please say so at once. Your Highness has four younger brothers, any of whom might wish to guide these islands along the one true way in your place.”

You could see this not appealing to the Prince at all. He never did like his brothers. He said, “Oh, in that case …”

“Then hearken to the Merlin as he prophesies,” Sybil suggested, and stood back.

The Prince and the King both looked inquiringly at the false Merlin, who gave them a merry smile, tossed the dead salamanders on the grass, and put his hands in the rope-pulling position, by which we were supposed to understand that he was making a prophecy. But I could see he was just pretending. He said, “This sacrifice both anoints our new King and brings the power of all Blest to the crown. By this sacrifice, we shall raise the land and bring peace and prosperity …”

I think he went on for some time, but I stopped listening. As soon as he said “raise the land,” I realized that this was exactly what he was doing. And he couldn’t be allowed to, not like this! Doing it by a blood sacrifice would bring Blest and all the worlds surrounding it into the realm of purest black magic. The balance would be tipped entirely the wrong way.

I fought my way out from the hurricane of magic and horror and tried to think through the hurt woman’s files again. They rushed into my head, file after file—Purple Vetch, Goose Grass, Foxglove, Teasel, Gorse, Mullein, Dog Rose, Thistle, Nightshade, poison, invisible peoples, sex magics, journeys, the dead, bird magic, shape shifting, summoning, unbinding—on and on, in a wild waterfall of spells. At first they seemed to be no use at all. But that phrase raise the land had given me such a jolt that before long it seemed to steady the rush down. I saw that they did not come into my head in any old order: they started with Purple Vetch for vortex and followed that with spells of binding and unbinding. Seeing that stopped the rush of files almost entirely. And I knew that I had known how to raise the land long before Romanov tried to explain it to me.

Each file, down at the very end, had what the hurt woman called its Great Spell, one that encompassed all the others. What Romanov had told me amounted simply to unbinding these. You started with vortex. Then you went on to unbinding in its Great form, and as you unbound the vortex, you fed into it each of the other Great Spells, good and bad alike, and you made them all unravel. The gods alone knew what would happen then! I almost turned to Grundo then. I wanted to ask him if he thought we would all be entirely without magic ever after.

Grundo’s face had gone white and secretive, and he wouldn’t look at me. All my earlier hurt came back. Grundo never needed me, he just used me, he never cared— Then I realized that Grundo was trying to work magic, too. It was something directional, by his look, which was always difficult for him, because he had to turn everything round the other way, against the grain of his mind. He was scowling, pouting the skin above his long nose as he concentrated.

By this time, as the false Merlin blathered on, the ripples were dying away from Nick. He was lying with his face in his arms, exhausted by the convulsions they had put him through. The false Merlin noticed. A mean look came over his face, and, still prophesying, he went over to the box and reached for another handful of salamanders.

Grundo burst the box open as he did so.

Toby cheered. It was wonderful for a moment. The sides fell out, and the lid flew up and hit the false Merlin in the face. The salamanders inside, hundreds and hundreds of them, had been packed and crammed in there, thoroughly miserable, anyway, and then panic-stricken when the first handful died. They came out like a small volcano. They showered into the air and then ran everywhere, incandescent with fear, setting the grass alight, raising smoke and flames and howls from the people in the ring of spectators. The false Merlin howled as loud as anyone. Sir James got a salamander on his smart hat and tried to beat the fire out on the chair, while Sybil ran and pranced and jumped to avoid red-hot salamanders running across her bare feet.

But it only lasted a minute or so. Those salamanders were so truly terrified that they all ran away as fast as they could, flashing among the feet of the crowd and diving under cars and buses, cooling off as they ran. By far the most of them seemed to race uphill, in among the great trilithons of Stonehenge. I think they were safe there. They seemed to be able to go away into the same distant layer of reality as Stonehenge itself and stay there.

Alicia had realized that it was Grundo who let them out. Well, she would. She took him by one ear and shook him, silently and fiercely, with her nails digging in. “Little beast!” she whispered. “Little pig!”

Two days ago that would have got all my attention at once. Now I realized that Grundo was distracting Alicia from me just when I needed it. It was quite hard, but I’m afraid I let Grundo suffer. I began trying to raise the land.

Vortex was there already. I only had to touch the spell in Purple Vetch to make it my magic and not Sybil’s or the false Merlin’s. The whirling in my head intensified, but I tried to ignore it and went on to Goose Grass or Cleavers and the Great Unbinding at the end of it. Ideally, you had to make a model of what you needed to unbind—it was like a hideously complicated cat’s cradle—and then say the words as you undid it. Because I couldn’t do that, I was forced to do it all in my head, imagining each strand of the cradle and the movements I might have used to untwist them and saying the words in my head, too. Try as I might, I couldn’t help making small twisting movements with my fingers. It was too difficult otherwise. And I couldn’t manage a translation of the words. I had to think them through in the hurt woman’s language, and I believe I was murmuring them as I worked.

My greatest fear was that nothing would happen. But I knew I was doing something when a great cluster of transparent people sped out of the lines of cloud and hung in the air above me, attracted by the magic. I was afraid that Alicia or one of the other pages might notice them, but they didn’t. Toby distracted them all by sinking his teeth into Alicia’s hand as it gripped Grundo’s ear. All the pages crowded in to separate Toby from Alicia and Alicia from Grundo—but quietly, because you didn’t make a noise in front of the King. I was able to move to one side and continue unbinding.

The King was still sitting there. I don’t think he noticed the salamanders. He didn’t seem to see that the false Merlin’s nose was bleeding. The false Merlin wiped the blood carefully on a handkerchief and handed it to Sybil. “Blood for a summoning,” he said to her. “We’ve no salamanders. We want that Old Power here instead, quickly.” He went and stood with one foot on Nick’s back, in case Nick recovered and tried to get up, while Sybil waved the red-blotched hanky about and began chanting.

“I can’t think why they think they need any more magic here,” Grundo grunted, appearing by my shoulder with one ear bleeding. I always forget how good Grundo is at slithering out of scraps. But at that stage I was only two-thirds of the way through the Great Unbinding. I made frantic noddings and face twistings at him not to distract me. His mouth made an oh of quiet understanding. Then he ducked out of my sight, and several of the pages yelped almost at once.

Gratefully I went on to the last third of the unbinding. Slowly and carefully I undid nine twists and three knots. Then I was done, right on to the very last, which was to pull an imaginary straight unknotted string through my fingers, to show that it was now free of all tangles. I wished that had been all. But I had to go on to feed all my flower files to the vortex, while my head spun with it, and pages heaved and gasped to one side of me, and Sybil, out in the open, got on with her summoning, too.

I don’t know how long I took to feed everything into the vortex. On one level, it took no time at all, just a crazy unreeling of file after file, plant after dry, thorny plant rushing through my mind and speeding into the twisted clouds, while I said to each, “I hereby call you to raise the land.” On another level I could see myself reaching out and slowly pulling to myself layer after layer of different magics. Sometimes I paused to marvel at them. Songs and thoughts looked truly beautiful, all intricate, curled-up colors, but when I turned them round to look at the other side, they were quite drab, and some had oozing nastinesses. Time and eternity took my breath away, though I tried not to look too hard at the demons that rode with them.

And I remember being slightly astonished at all the beings waiting in the wood where Toby had promised to go. I recognized the kingly man in the red cloak. He was on horseback, surrounded by his knights and standard bearers. I knew he was the Count of Blest. But there were ladies with him that I didn’t know and large numbers of tall people who didn’t look quite as solid as the Count and his court. They all looked relieved when they saw me standing between two trees and called out to know if it was time. “Yes,” I said. “My cousin is not able to come, but it is time.” They started to move at once, while the trees around them tossed and surged.

I called good things and bad things, and things that were neither, birds, animals, growing things, and things that never changed. I called the sun. I called stars, moon, and planets. Last of all, I called the world, and Blest rolled toward me.

Everything seemed to come loose.

The wonder of it was that this only seemed to take seconds. When I finished, Sybil was still chanting, the false Merlin still had his foot on Nick’s back, and Grundo and Toby were still silently wrestling with Alicia and the other pages. Nobody seemed to notice what was happening.

What was happening was terrifying. Blest was rolling loose among the universes, shedding strips of magic like bandages unwinding from a mummy. I saw the islands we had crossed behind Helga dipping and spinning. One actually pitched sideways and sank. Another seemed to be melting, and nearly all of them had lost their clear, luminous colors. They were patchy, with brown clouds.

I saw London walk among his towers and carefully put his huge foot down on a house, crushing it to brick dust.

I saw a huge wave rise out of a sea on another world and rush across a land full of brown people in houses. There were no houses after that. In another world a vast being standing guard on the top of a green hill turned and looked doubtfully over his shoulder. He seemed to have lost his purpose. After a while he came down from his hill and walked across the plains to meet three other beings like him, who looked equally lost. I was sorry about that, because this was the world where we had accidentally arrived in that library, and they depended for their magics on these Guardians of the Four Quarters. When I looked at another world, I saw that all its magic had entered its railway lines, causing incredible confusion. And I turned to a world of giant canyons, just in time to see a glistening xanadu collapse into the caves beneath it, followed by half the rocky landscape in great plumes of dust. That horrified me because I had no idea if my parents were in there or not.

Here, in the Islands of Blest, lines of power were winking out, and from every river there was rising a slimy, shell-covered head. “Free!” they growled. “Loose at last!” and their waters began to rise. Manchester, in a red dress, was hurriedly building city walls. Things that had been buried under the Pennines for centuries were crawling out from under confining blocks of magic. Not all these things were evil, but all over the country, moors and forests were becoming strange and powerful as the layers of magic shredded away. And the sea was rising.

What have I done? I thought. What have I done?

The magic was still shredding. In my head the file Gorse: home and country continued to unreel into the vortex long after the others had gone. It made sense. The magic of the Islands of Blest had more layers than anywhere else. I watched the strips unwind, layer after layer, until I thought for a moment that I was looking at the bedrock of our country. It was a brown-green lumpy shape, right at the bottom of things. Then it stirred, stretched, and sat up. It shook loose hair back and smiled at me, and I recognized the lady who had taken away the virtue from the Inner Garden.

“I never knew you were alive before,” I said.

“Of course I am,” she said. “So is every land. Thank you. Now I can put things back as I want them.” She lay back, like someone settling into a really comfortable sofa, and began pulling bands and scarves of magic across herself, slowly and carefully, looking at each strip before she laid it on herself. Some she shook her head at and threw away, some she put aside to lay on later, and some she smiled at and gave special treatment to, like wrapping them round her shoulders or her head.

Perhaps I haven’t destroyed everything, then, I thought.

A tremendous roar came out of the east. It was like an answer.

I had never heard anything that remotely resembled that noise, but Nick tells me that he thought it was a jet plane, flying very low. He was half delirious at that stage, shaken with shudders of pain, and he says he thought he was back on Earth suddenly. But the roar came a second time, and he realized what it was. And where he was, which he says was not so good. Everyone turned to look to the east, even Sybil, but no one could see anything for the huge bank of mist rolling up from there.

The dragon came flying above the mist, against the blue sky. He was white as chalk and touched gold from the sinking sun. He was enormous. The King stood up, which was fitting, although everyone else half crouched, except for the false Merlin, who stared up at the dragon, dumb-founded. The Archbishops fell to their knees and prayed, as did quite a few of the priests in the crowd.

The dragon came flying on, and he was even more enormous. When he was about half a mile away, his huge cry came again. There were words in it, but they were too loud to understand. Nick raised his head and shouted back, “This one! The one standing on me!”

“AH!” said the dragon. Everyone clearly saw the flame flicker in its huge mouth.

Then it was there. It cut through the vortex as if that did not exist, and hundreds of transparent folk sped away outward, frantic to get out of its way. For a moment it was like being under a great ivory-colored tent. The dragon’s wings were so huge that they covered Stonehenge in one direction and all the cars and buses of the Court in the other.

A shining white claw came down from the ivory hugeness—it shone like marble, but you could see it was hard as granite—and hooked itself around the false Merlin. He screamed, a high, childlike scream, as he was snatched away upward. The gigantic wings beat with a dull boom, like thunder, or strong wind in a tent, pulling the mist in across us. It started to snow then, in lines that twisted with the vortex, filling everyone’s hair with furry whiteness, but I honestly think nobody really noticed. We were all staring up at the dragon as he rose, huge and white and perfect, dangling the tiny dark figure of the false Merlin in one clawed front foot.

He circled with his prey, round against the sun, until he was far out over the plain, to the west. Then he dropped the false Merlin. Most of us watched the little dark shape hurtle downward. Most of us strained to hear the noise of that shape hitting the ground, but there was no sound. It was too far away.

But Sir James strode through the whirling snow and came up to Sybil beside the two Archbishops. He didn’t bother with them, nor with the King and Prince Edmund, who were both standing by Sybil. He said to Sybil, “Much better. Now there’s only two of us to share everything. Let’s get this sacrifice over, shall we? Shall I kill him, or do you still insist on your ritual?”

Now the false Merlin was gone, Sybil seemed much more herself. She drew herself up. “My ritual—” she began. She stopped, looking irritable, and moved aside.

My grandfather Gwyn was there, looming above her on his white mare. His cloak clapped about in the snow and strips of bloody horsehide swirled from his standard. All his people were behind him, dimly visible in the mist and the snow.

“About time, too!” Sybil shouted up at him. “You should obey when I call! Kill this boy at once. We want your stake through his heart according to the ritual.”

Nick sat up at this and scrambled round on his knees.

My grandfather Gwyn did not look at him. He said to Sybil, “No. I warned you, but you never listened, did you now? You have called me three times already. Now you have called me yet again, and I have the right to call you. And I now call you.”

Here, for a while, so many things happened at once that I have had to ask the others what they saw and did. I was mostly watching Sybil. I think she truly saw Grandfather Gwyn for the first time then. She stared up at him, and her face was like uncooked prettybread, blotched with red over yellow-white. Her mouth came open, and she flopped to her knees with her hands clasped. “Spare me,” she said.

“No,” my grandfather said. “From now on, you follow me.”

He started to ride forward. Sybil was scrambling round on her knees to obey him—she never argued or even tried to protest—when more riders loomed through the fog and the snow, coming from the opposite direction. The one in front was wearing a dark red cloak which billowed and whirled around his armor. He saw Grandfather Gwyn and his people and stopped. I had just a glimpse of the elegant, practiced way his gloved left hand drew up his reins, and of the way his horse tossed its head and champed, not at all willing to stop, while the rider raised his right hand courteously to my grandfather. Then I had to look at the upheaval going on beside me.

Grundo says that a piece of the wet, snowy grass unfolded beside him to let a crowd of Little People come swarming out on their bent-back legs. I think they were the ones I had felt watching so anxiously. They wanted Grundo and Toby for some reason. Grundo says he had no idea why, but he knew at once that they wanted him. He grabbed Toby and got clear. I didn’t see any of that. All I saw was a seething struggle between Little People and snow-sodden royal pages, human youngsters being seized around the legs and bitten by long sharp teeth, and the humans kicking and punching in return. I had a flying glimpse of Grundo with his hair filled with snow, forging through the other side of the struggle, and I nearly went to help him. Then I thought that this was what he had bespelled me to do, and I stopped. And then I thought that you helped people if they needed it, and I started forward again. But it was over by then. The Little People dragged Alicia away through the open fold and the fold slid shut.

Do you know, I envied Alicia! I still do. What an interesting thing to happen to her, I thought. It’s not fair!

When I looked out into the driving, spiraling snow, Grandfather Gwyn had almost finished riding round the open space, selecting people from the crowd to follow him. He had Sybil and most of the other Court wizards walking obediently behind his line of horses by then. I think one of the other people may have been Toby’s father.

NICK

I suppose I’d better tell this bit. Roddy says she was busy trying to convince the royal pages that Alicia had gone for good. And they wanted to know where, but she had no more idea than they did.

I was so dazed and scared, and sore and frozen, that it all seemed more like a tumultuous dream than anything. I sat on the sopping grass, with snow catching on my eyelashes, and watched Gwyn ap Nud greet the Count of Britain—at least, they call him the Count of Blest here, but I call him the Count of Britain. I think he was King Arthur once, but I’m not sure.

They were very courtly and stately with one another, and you could see they were equals. The Count of Blest in his red cloak said, “Well met in this time of change, Prince. Are you taking all here?”

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.

RODDY

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.

NICK

I’ve done what Maxwell Hyde wanted—he says his Upper Room needs to see this—but I still feel, well, maimed. It was not so much what Japheth did, although that hurt like crazy; it was being sort of invaded by someone else’s hatred. And I can’t get over the way such small things led to such incredibly large, violent events. It’s like the way I told that old man in Loggia City that his tapestry was beautiful, and that destroyed the city. I answered the phone to Sybil, and that seems to have set her on to grab power and make her conspiracy. And I laughed at Japheth. That was all I did.

Maxwell Hyde said, when I told him this, that large things often do hinge on very small incidents. “And I don’t believe for a moment your laughing at him set that Japheth on to murder his Prayermaster,” he said. “I’d very much like to know what other criminal activities those two got up to between rushing off in that flier and turning up just recently.”

I got up the courage to ask him what had happened to Joel then. “Well,” he said, “I was fighting my way out of a skein of cotton wool at the time, but I got the impression that a spotted cat of some kind tore him to bits. The creature was covered with blood when I saw it. But don’t tell Roddy. It’s not the kind of thing she can take.”

He may be right, although Roddy is actually quite tough. I got to know her quite well, in a subdued sort of way, this last month. The trouble with Roddy is that she is too eaten up inside with magic. It’s going to take me years to get through to her. But I’m going to keep trying. The problem is, I don’t know quite how I shall manage it, what with her being on Blest and me being on Earth. I shall have to go back to see Dad. He needs looking after. I see that now. I shouldn’t have blurted out to Romanov that I wanted to go with him.

But I do want to see Romanov and get him to teach me, even though Romanov is bound to be ten times more demanding than Maxwell Hyde. I do want to be a free operator like Romanov. Much as I like Maxwell Hyde, I keep running up against his limits. In the last resort, he always has to do what his bosses in the Upper Room want, and I don’t think I could stand that. I’d go mad after six months.

There was a noise in the street. I went to look and saw Mrs. Candace getting out of that brown car. I shall have to go down and say good-bye to Roddy. But the noise was from the ring of kids standing round Mini. Romanov has come to fetch Grundo, too. I have to go and explain to him that I’m not going with Grundo, not yet, and make an arrangement to get to his island later. I’ll go when I’ve made sure that my dad will be all right for the rest of his life.