The Merlin Conspiracy (28 page)

He walked away. “Is Romanov okay?” I called after him.

“He will be,” he called back. “Don't be long. Lunch.”

When I got to the kitchen, he was standing over the range stirring a vast pan of eggs. My miserable lettuce and manky tomatoes had been turned into a halfway decent salad, and there was another new loaf to go with it.

“I thought you didn't want eggs,” I said, scratching at my salt-sticky hair.

“That was this morning,” he said. “Dig me out a tray and some cutlery. I'm hoping Romanov will be up to eating some of this.”

When everything was ready, I offered to take the tray in to Romanov, but he wouldn't let me. “I'm not letting you near him,” he said. “Don't you understand? Someone laid a pretty vicious working on you, designed to destroy Romanov and get you blamed for it. I
think
I've scotched it, but I'm not taking any chances.” He carried the tray off to Romanov himself, along with a vast pot of tea and an enormous mug, and came back looking pleased with himself. “
That
seems all right,” he said. “Got his appetite back. Get eating, lad. While you're getting yourself round this lot, I want a detailed account of exactly what you've been up to since you were standing by my elbow in London.”

So I told him. Maxwell Hyde interrupted me several times and insisted on going back over what I'd just said and making me tell it again. The first time was over the magic I'd done with Arnold, Chick, Dave, and Pierre, to make the cricket stadium safe.

“Oh, I get you!” he said when I'd explained again. “
That
world. English Empire over most of Europe and paranoid over the Russian-Turkish bloc. Well, one thing's certain, and that's that this anti-Romanov stuff wasn't put on you
there
. Half their paranoia is because their mages aren't any good, if you ask me. Typical slipshod working, the one you had your hand in, lad. Why are you looking so doleful?”

I was feeling bad about those four mages again. “I got them into bad trouble,” I said. “Arnold and them. Pretending to be a novice that way. I could tell they were in trouble by the frantic way they were hunting for me.”

Maxwell Hyde gave a sigh. “Probably. I'll check up—have to anyway—but frankly, I don't see what else you could have done without being shot as a spy. You played it right by instinct, as far as I can see. Go on.”

I did, and he interrupted me again to ask about the black panther in the wood and again to ask me about when the mages were looking for me there. “Misty, were they? Now, think carefully. Would you say they were only partly there, while you were
really
there?”

“That's what it seemed like,” I said. “I didn't know if they could see me or not. That's why I went up the dark path, to get away from them. But I sat down then and decided in the end that I'd better go and find Romanov.”

“Now, hang on,” Maxwell Hyde said. “You told me Romanov seemed to despise you and you were obviously pretty scared of him. Exactly
why
did you think Romanov was the man to consult? Did it feel like a compulsion at all?”

“It could have been,” I admitted. “I know it seems odd, when I knew he'd been offered money to get rid of me, but I think I went because he was
excellent
, really. He was a hundred times better than Arnold and his lot. And I could pay him, too. Besides, wasn't that spell already
on
me, from when Romanov came to find me? He was ill before I got here.”

“We'll consider that in the right place,” Maxwell Hyde said. “Could have been overkill, you see. Carry on.”

I went on, until I came to where I met Maxwell Hyde himself. He made faces there. I think he was ashamed of being so drunk. Then we both heard a sudden humming at the back of the kitchen and whirled round. There was a large fridge standing there, working away.

Maxwell Hyde bounced up. “Ah,” he said. “Romanov's feeling better.” He looked inside the fridge with appreciative noises, and fetched out a big piece of cheese and a cluster of strawberry puddings. They had strange writing on the cartons, but they tasted like strawberry mousse to me. We both had one, and he took one through to Romanov.

I was glad of the interruption. I was still having such a mixture of feelings about meeting that girl Roddy—or I was embarrassed, or
something
—that I wanted to leave her out of it altogether. Now I had time to work out how not to mention her, so I sat and stared at the range and thought. It wasn't a range anymore, really. It was a white thing with doors and no sign of a fire. Nothing like so comforting.

Then Maxwell Hyde came back and went on listening to me, with his leather-patched elbow on the table and his sharp, soldierly chin in his hand. I went on seamlessly to my time in Loggia City, then to meeting Mini, and then to the end, and didn't mention Roddy at all. Maxwell Hyde nodded and grunted a bit, but he didn't interrupt.

“Right,” he said when I was up to the place where the flier took off. “Plenty of food for thought there. Some of it I'll need to think about a bit. But there are two things that spring to mind straightaway. First, about just when this anti-Romanov working was put on you. I wondered about the Prayermaster doing it for a while. It's their kind of thing. They do a lot of dirty work under the name of prayer. But the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that it was done in London, by this person who sent you off. Under my nose, too.” He sniffed in an irritable way. “Says volumes for how nervous I was,” he said. “I should have spotted it. Anyway, does that make sense to you?”

I nodded. It did seem likely.

“Then you've got an enemy,” Maxwell Hyde said. “Someone who dislikes you as much as he dislikes Romanov. Any ideas?”

All I could think of was that this enemy was something to do with my real father's Koryfonic Empire. We discussed that for a bit, but in the end Maxwell Hyde shook his head sharply.

“No,” he said. “Won't wash. Person has to have it in for Romanov even more than for you. I'll check with Romanov, of course, but I'd take a strong guess that he's never gone near that Empire. Got more sense. Anyway, to get on to the second thing. I'd be interested to know at what point you moved back ten years. It took me all night to suss out how to do that, even after I'd discovered I'd have to. When did you realize?”

“I didn't,” I said. “I just went here. But …” I thought about it. “It could have been when the path forked,” I said doubtfully. “Something was a bit wrong then—but I don't know.”

“Any idea
how
you did it?” Maxwell Hyde asked. I shook my head, and he sighed. “No, it was all blind instinct, I suppose,” he said. “Ah, well. The nasty part seems clear enough, though. The Prayermaster gets you to lead him to Romanov and arrives here with these two boys. Whereupon they do him in. Any idea why?”

I thought of the implacable schoolmaster face with its gold-rimmed glasses and found the corners of my mouth pinching in. “If you'd met him, you'd know. They must have hated him, really
hated
him.” Maxwell Hyde shot me one of his looks. “They were horrible kids,” I said. “I've no sympathy for them either. But think of the worst schoolmaster you ever had.”

Maxwell Hyde winced a bit. “Right,” he said. “Right. Prayers and beatings, you think? So we have two vicious young killers loose with a flier, who know how to find Romanov.” He sprang up again. “I'll just go and warn him, I think.”

While he was gone, I ate two banana puddings and a chocolate one and felt better. It looked as if Maxwell Hyde hadn't noticed that I'd left out meeting Roddy, and he was definitely not suspecting me of murder anymore, though I think he'd wondered. This was a relief.

“I've let Romanov know,” Maxwell Hyde announced, coming back, “and he says he'll alter this island as soon as he can, so they can't find him again. But the mystery thickens about this enemy you both have. He's never touched your Empire, so it can't be that. And he had no connection with you whatsoever before yesterday. So we're stuck there, too. But I said we'd get rid of the Prayermaster for him. Come along.”

He went to the outside door and beckoned with the folded sheet he was carrying. I swallowed and went with him, wishing I hadn't eaten those extra puddings.

That side of the island was already farther away. We'd walked nearly three hundred yards before we met Mini, hanging around beside the goat. Both of them looked miserable.

“My tummy's funny,” Mini explained sadly.

“How many apples
did
you eat?” I said.

“Two whole treefuls,” she admitted.

“Then you know who's to blame,” I said. “Try filling up with hay. What's wrong with the goat?”

“She doesn't like being tied up,” Mini said.

“Tell her my heart bleeds,” I said.

I hated the next bit. I had to go crunching down those pebbles and help wrap the sheet round the Prayermaster. It was horrible, even though I tried not to look. Banana was sort of coming back up my nose before long, and I had to go and sit on the grass.

Maxwell Hyde came up to join me. “My idea,” he said, “was to sling this fellow—and the murder weapons—further along this coast, so they'll end up in the world the beach really belongs to. A nasty puzzle for the people there, I'm afraid, but it won't be nearly as much bad luck for them as it will be for Romanov if we leave everything here. A murdered corpse always brings vile bad luck on the spot where it happened. Trouble is, Romanov can't remember where he got this section
from
. I'll have to think a bit.”

I nodded and swallowed, and after a bit I began to feel better. I looked round at Maxwell Hyde, sitting upright, with his thin, businesslike hands clasped round his damp tweed knee, intending to ask how his thinking was getting on. He looked round at me at the same moment.

“No,” he said. “Doesn't add up. I told you to help three people on the way. Your story only has two, even if you count the elephant as a person and the second one as the old chap with the tapestry. Or do you count the Prayermaster, too?”

I could feel my face slowly going as fiery as the middle of the vanished kitchen range. I said, “Well, it
may
have been him.”

His look got twice as keen. I could feel it on the side of my face. “Come clean,” he said. “What was the third?”

“Er,” I said. “There was this girl—but maybe it isn't, because I haven't helped her yet. Arianrhod, but she said to call her Roddy. She was in some place called Blest, you see, and I said I'd go there after I'd seen Romanov.”

There was silence. All I could hear were several different kinds of sea breeze hitting the trees. I thought it was ominous.

“Well!” said Maxwell Hyde. “Well, I'm blessed! No pun intended. Fair, was she, or dark?”

“Dark,” I said. “About my age.”

“Well,”
he said again. “I was about to point out to you, my lad, that you seem to have unfinished business, but this clinches it, I think. What did my granddaughter ask you to do?”

“Your
granddaughter
!” I yelped.

He nodded. “Has to be. Unusual name, magical heritage, prefers to be called Roddy, lives in Blest. My eldest granddaughter. QED.”

“You mean”—I gulped—“that you're from this place, too?”

“That's right.” He chuckled, quite suddenly.

“But how come—” I began.

“How come I publish mystery stories on Earth?” he said. “I publish on Thule, Tellans, lots of places, too. Everyone in those places is apt to go on about how convincing my alternate world setting is, but of course it's only Blest. Quite ordinary to me—and to Blest people, worse luck. I hardly sell at all in Blest. Sales so bad, in fact, that I thought I'd make use of my Magid skills to turn a penny or so in other worlds. What did she want—Roddy?”

He had this way of spearing you with the last little thing he said. I wriggled a bit and said, “There's this plot. The Merlin seems to be in it, and she wanted outside help.”

Maxwell Hyde narrowed his eyes. It was as if he was looking at this Merlin fellow from a long way off. He shook his head. “She's wrong, of course. She has this little way of getting wrought up, our Roddy. The Merlin's young yet, but he's a deep one. They all are. Maybe up to something Roddy got the wrong end of the stick about. Bound to be. She's only a child. Right. I'll speak to your father,” he said, getting up. “Let's get this Prayermaster seen to, then.”

“What do you mean,” I said, getting up slowly, “speak to Dad?”

He turned round on his way down the slope. “Well, he's obviously got to see that you're in one piece before I carry you off to Blest, hasn't he?”

I stared at him. He looked up at me seriously.

“Look,” he said, “you've not only got unfinished business, lad. You've also managed to do something I can only do with difficulty, when drunk.
Plus
you've had conversations with animals and held off a Prayermaster when he tried to put you under the prayer.
Not
things most people can do. I consider it my duty, before you try something that kills you or harms your world, to take you home to Blest with me and give you a little basic training. Right?”