The Merlin Conspiracy (13 page)

After about three bends I could hear words in the yelling. “We plow the fields and scatter the dynamite on the land!” I heard. And then, after another bend: “Good King Wencis last looked out—when did he
first
look out, then?—on the feast of Stephen!”

I almost laughed, but I still went very cautiously, and the light kept getting stronger and the yelling went on. You couldn't call it singing. It was too out of tune. And finally I edged round another bend and saw the person making the din.

He was a skinny, white-haired old drunk, and he was leaning against a bulge of rock, singing his head off. When I peeped round the bend at him, he was yelling about “Rock of Ages, cleft for meeee!” and holding up a little blue flame in both shaky old hands. The flame lit his clothes shiny and blazed off the wet rocks and his wrinkled, yelling face. He held the flame higher up as I peeped at him and shouted, “Come on, come on, both of you! Or am I just seeing double? Come out where I can see all the pair of you! Don't
lurk
!”

I came round in front of him. There didn't seem any harm in him. I'd never seen anyone so drunk, not even my friends after they'd drunk all Dad's whiskey. He couldn't have hurt anyone in that state. He had trouble just seeing me. He wavered about, holding the little flame out toward me, and blinked and peered. I'd been thinking this flame was some kind of outdoor candle, or a torch like Arnold and Co. had used, but it wasn't. It was a little curl of blue light standing on his hands, blazing away out of nothing.

“I'm drunk,” he said to me. “Night as a tute. Can't ever come this way unless I get drunk first. Too scared. Tell me, are
you
scared?”

“Yes,” I said. I couldn't take my eyes off that little flame. It was one of the most extraordinary things I'd ever seen. “Doesn't that burn you?”

“Not at all, notatall, notatall,” he shouted. He was too drunk to talk quietly. “Being of one substance with my flesh, you know, it can't hurt. Litchwight, I mean witchlight, they call it. Not even hot, dear lad. Not even warm. So, well then, out with it, out with it!”

“Out with what?” I said.

“Whatever you need or want, of course. You have to meet three folk in need in this place and give them what help you can before you can get where you're going. You're my third,” he shouted, waving his little flame backward and forward more or less under my nose, “so I'm naturally anxious to get you done and dealt with and get on. So out with it. What do you want?”

I should have asked him how to find Romanov. I see that now. A lot of things would have been different if I had. But I was so amazed by that little blue flame that I leaned backward to get its light out of my eyes and pointed to it. “Can I do that? Can you show me how to do it?”

He wavered forward from his rock, peering at me, and nearly fell down. “Amazing,” he said, hastily getting his back to the rock again. “Amazing. You're
here
, but you can't do a simple thing like raising light, or do I mean lazing right? Whichever. You can't. Why not?”

“No one ever showed me how,” I said.

He swayed about, looking solemn. “I quote,” he said. “I'm very well read in the literature of several worlds, you know, and I quote. ‘What do they teach them in these schools?' Know where that comes from?”

“One of the Narnia books,” I said. “The one where Narnia begins. Can you show me how to make a light like that?”

“
Tell
you,” he corrected me, looking even more solemn. “I can't
show
you because it comes from inside yourself, see. What you do is find your center—can you do that?”

“My navel, you mean?” I said.

“No,
no
!” he howled. “You're not a
woman
! Or
are
you? Confess I can't see you too well, but your voice sounds like teenage male to me. Is that what you are?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And a plumb ignorant one, too,” he grumbled. “Fancy not knowing—Well, your center is
here
!”

He plunged toward me and took me completely by surprise by jabbing me hard just under my breastbone. What with that, and the blast of alcohol that came with the jab, I went staggering backward into the rocks on the other side of the path. He overbalanced. He snatched at my knees as he went down, missed, and ended in a heap by my feet. The blue light seemed to splash all over the ground. Then it climbed one of his arms and settled on his shiny wet shoulder.

“Polar sexus,” he said sadly. “That's where it is, polar sexus.”

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

He raised his soaking gray head. “There is,” he said, “a special angel appointed to watch over those under the inkerfluence of eight over the one. That, young man, is why I had to imbibe before coming here. It all hangs together. Now do you understand how to summon light?”

“No,” I said frankly.

“Don't you even know where your solar plexus is?” he demanded.

“I thought you said polar sexus,” I said.

He went up on to his hands and knees and shook his head sadly. Water flew off as if he was a wet dog. “Now you're making fun of me. But I shall be forbearing,” he said, “though mostly for the reason that I shan't get out of this place if I'm not. And I may add, young man, that your attitude toward the elderly is less than respectful. Polar sexus indeed!” He started fumbling around on the ground in front of my feet. “Where is it? Where did I put my damn light?”

“It's on your shoulder,” I said.

He turned his face and saw it. He more or less put his nose in it. “Now you're having a joke on me,” he said. “I shall be freezingly polite and ignore it, or we'll be here all night. Pick me up.”

He smelled so disgustingly of booze that I really didn't want to touch him, but I did want to know how you made light, so I bent down and grabbed him by his sopping jacket. He didn't like that. He said, “Unhand me at once!” and crawled away backward.

“You
asked
me to,” I said. I was getting fed up.

“No, I didn't,” he retorted. “I was merely seeking a way out of our dilemma by asking you to pick up my witchlight. If you can keep it alight when you have it, you will in fact be making it for yourself. Come on. Take it. It won't hurt you, and I can easily make more.”

Well, I wondered if he did mean this, but I went gently up to him and tried cupping the little flame in my hands. It didn't feel of anything very much. A bit warm perhaps, but that was all. I stood up holding it, really delighted. Then it began to sink and fizzle.

“No, no! Ignore it,” he cried out. “Think of something else quickly!” He scrambled himself up the rockface and somehow managed to stand up. Then he snapped his fingers and held out another blue flame, balanced on the palm of his withered old hand. “See? Now change the subject.”

“Er,” I said, trying not to look at the blue spark I was holding, “you said we had to meet three folks in need. Are you my first?”

“Of course not!” he said. “I don't need anything. I just want out of here, and you're my third, so I can go now.”

“Who else did you meet,” I asked, “before me?”

“A goat,” he said. “I
kid
you not! Joke, joke, ha-ha! Lost its way, you know, and then there was an obnoxious child who said she was hiding from her sin twister—twin sister—and she only wanted me to promise not to give her away.”

“What did you do about the goat?” I asked.

“What
can
one do for a goat? Turned it round and gave it a push on the rump, I think,” he said. “That's a bit hazy, to tell the truth, but I know neither of them was half the trouble
you've
been. Do you think you've got it now?”

I dared to look down at my hands. There was a cautious little flicker there, about the size of a match flame. I tried willing it larger, but nothing happened. “Sort of,” I said.

He pushed off from the rocks and came staggering across to see. I swear the drink on his breath made the flame twice the size for an instant. “Yes, yes, you've got it now all right,” he said. “No need for me to linger. Farewell, for I must leave thee, don't hang yourself on a weeping willow tree!” By then he was singing again, bawling out a tuneless tune and swaying himself round as he bawled. I thought he was going to walk straight into the rockface opposite us, but there turned out to be an opening there that I hadn't seen before. He plunged into it, turning it all blue-silver with the flame in his hand, singing his head off. “In his master's steps he trod,” I heard, booming out of the rocky cleft. “Heat was in that very naughty word which the saint had printed! Print and be damned, I say …”

I giggled a bit and took another look at my flame. It seemed to have settled down quite snugly by this time, enough that it didn't seem to mind being moved across to my left hand so that I had my right hand free. I waited a bit to make absolutely sure it was going to go on burning; then I set off down the path again.

That part wasn't nearly so bad. It was such a help to be able to
see
. I got on quite fast. And when the drizzle stopped and the noises started again, I held the flame up toward where I'd heard them from, and its blue light showed me that there was nothing there. It was all done to frighten people. So I began to stride on and even whistle a bit—and I was a bit more in tune than the old drunk, too—and my flame seemed to like the whistling. It grew bigger. After that I got a lot less nervous of it and began to play about with it, sliding it up my arm and then up past my ear to the top of my head. It burned a lot brighter on my head. I had an idea that I could probably slide it off into the air and have it floating in front of me, but I didn't quite dare do that in case I lost it. I kept it on my head and had both hands free. I even put my hands in my pockets to try to warm them and really strode out, whistling.

I strode round a corner and met my first person.

She was standing facing me in the path, but she wasn't really in the path at all. She was in a pale patch of light with scenery in it. The patch was just sort of
there
. It didn't light up any of the rocks around or the ground in front of it. She was my age, or perhaps a bit younger, and … well, you know how you have an idea of your ideal girl in your mind. She was mine. She had dark, curly hair that was blowing about in a wind I couldn't feel and really big blue-gray eyes with nice eyelashes round them. Her face was thin, and so was the rest of her. I remember noticing she was wearing an old-looking gray knitted sweater and leggings that went tight below her knees, but mostly I noticed she was much better-looking than I'd expected my ideal girl to be. But the chief thing about her was that she was one of those girls who look as if they've just grown, as naturally as … as a tree or … a hollyhock or something … as if she'd just
happened
somehow. I always fancy girls like that, even if they're older than me. It's my type.

I slowed right down and came up to her step by step. When I was near enough, I saw she was holding a scruffy bunch of flowers in one hand. They were not flowers picked for their looks. I don't know what most of them were, but I did see that one was a tall thing with blobby yellow flowers in steps down its stalk, and furry leaves. I noticed because a caterpillar dropped off it as I walked up.

By then I was near enough to see that inside the patch of light she was standing somewhere quite high on a hillside. There was low blue distance behind her. And nearer than that, but still behind her, just on the edge of the slope, I could see a much younger kid—a boy—sitting sort of hunched over so that all I could see was his back. He didn't move, or speak, or even seem to know that I was there.

She knew I was there, though. She watched me walking up to her. Her eyes went to the flame sitting on my head.

“Oh, good,” she said. “You're a wizard. I asked for a wizard particularly.”

“I'm not really,” I said. It was all so strange that I didn't feel shy or awkward, the way I would if I'd met her anywhere else. “I'm only just beginning to learn.”

“Well, that
may
be all right,” she said. “I asked for someone who could help in this situation, so you must be able to do what's needed. What's your name?”

“Nichothodes,” I said. It seemed important to tell her my real name. “Nick, usually.”

“I'm Arianrhod,” she said. “A mouthful, just like your name. But I prefer people to call me Roddy.”

I wanted to say that Arianrhod sounded much nicer than Roddy, but that seemed—I don't know—likely to annoy her, or—now I think back on it—more as if the conversation had to go another way. I went with the way it had to go and said, “What kind of help do you want?”

Her eyebrows came together anxiously. When I think back, I can see she was massively anxious the whole time. “That's the problem,” she said. “I don't
know
how you can help. It almost seems hopeless. Our whole country is probably in horrible danger, and nobody seems to know except me. And …” Her hand went back to point at the younger kid. “Grundoon, of course. Sir James seems to have the Merlin completely under his thumb somehow. Or else the Merlin's turned bad. Sybil's in it, too. I mean, I know the Merlin's quite new, and young, and a bit weak—”