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Authors: Diana Wynne Jones

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BOOK: The Merlin Conspiracy
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“Yik!” said Pierre. “Where did you get hold of
that
?”

“Aztec Empire,” Arnold said, peacefully puffing out brown clouds.

I shall wake up from this dream with cancer! I thought. The slab seat was hard. I shifted about and ached. Most of the people fell asleep after an hour or so, but I couldn't. I supposed at the time that it was because I was asleep already. I know that seems silly, but it was all so
strange
, and I'd been so used to dreaming, for months now, that I had found my way into another world that I really and truly believed that this was just another of those dreams. I sat and sweated while we droned on, and even that didn't alert me to the fact that this might be
real
. Dreams usually sort of fast-forward long journeys and things like that, but I didn't think of that. I just thought the journey
was
the dream.

At last there was another of those warning
pings
. The officer reached into his jacket for his phone and talked to it for a short while. Then he put the jacket on and came toward the men in suede, who were all stretching and yawning and looking bleary.

“Messieurs,” he said, “you'll have twenty minutes. The royal flit will circle during that time under the protection of the Prince's personal mages and then put down on the pavilion roof. You're expected to have the stadium secured by then. All right?”

“All right,” Arnold agreed. “Thanks, monsieur.” Then, when the officer had gone back to the other soldiers, he said, “Bloody
powers
!”

“Going to have to hustle, aren't we?” Chick said. He jerked his head toward me. “What do we do about him? He's not skyclad.”

Arnold was the one in charge. He blinked slowly at me as if he'd noticed me for the first time. “Not really a problem,” he said. “He'll have to keep out of the circle, that's all. We'll put him on boundary patrol.” Then he actually spoke to me. “You, mon gar,” he said, “will do exactly as we say at all times, and if you set so much as a toe over the wardings, I'll have your guts for garters. That clear?”

I nodded. I wanted to tell him that I hadn't the faintest idea what we were supposed to be doing, but I didn't quite like to. Anyway the flier—flit or whatever—started making a great deal more noise and going downward in jerks, hanging in the air and then jerking sickeningly down again. I swallowed and sat back, thinking that it would probably all be obvious what to do, the way it is in dreams, and took a look out of the window. I had just time to see a big oval of green stadium surrounded by banks of seats crowded with people, and blue, blue sea somewhere beyond that, before we came down with a grinding
thump
and everyone leaped up.

The soldiers went racing and clattering off to take up positions round the roof we'd landed on. They were carrying rifles. It was serious security. We clattered off after them into scalding sunlight, and I found myself ducking as the flier roared off into the air again just above my head, covering us in an instant of deep blue shadow. As it did, the others bent over some kind of compass that Dave had fetched out.

“North's up the narrow end opposite,” Dave said, “pretty exactly.”

“Right,” said Arnold. “Then we go the quickest way.” And he led us rushing down some stairs at the corner of the roof. We clattered along boards then, somewhere high up along the front of the pavilion, and raced on down much steeper stairs with crowds of well-dressed people on either side. They all turned to stare at us.
“Ceux sont les sorciers,”
I heard someone say, and again, when we got to the smart white gate at the bottom of the stairs and a wrinkled old fellow in a white coat opened it for us, he turned to someone and said knowingly,
“Ah. Les sorciers.”
I reckon it meant, Those are the mages, you know.

We rushed out into the enormous stadium, hurrying across acres of green, green grass with blurred banks of faces all round and all staring at us. It really was exactly like my worst dreams. I felt about an inch high as Arnold led us trotting straight toward the opposite end of the oval. I could see he was going to take us right across the square of even greener grass where the wicket was laid out, flat and brownish, right in front of us.

Now, I'm not much for cricket myself, but I did know that you were never, ever supposed to run on the sacred wicket. I wondered whether to say something. I was quite relieved when Pierre panted out, “Er, Arnold … not on the wicket … really.”

“What? Oh. Yes,” Arnold said, and he took a small curve, so that we went trotting just beside the strip of bare rolled turf.

Pierre turned his eyes up and murmured to Chick, “He's from Schleswig-Holstein. What can you expect?”

“Empire's full of barbarians,” Chick panted back in a whisper.

We hastened on to the end of the stadium, where we had to do another detour, around the sightscreen. There was a grille behind it blocking an archway under the seating. Soldiers let us through, and we plunged into chilly concrete gloom beyond, where we really got busy. We were in the space underneath the seats there, which ran right round the stadium like a concrete underpass, including under the pavilion. I know it did, because I was forced to rush all round it three times.

Arnold dumped down the bag he was carrying on the spot Dave said was the exact north and snatched out of it five big sugar shakers full of water. “Ready blessed,” he said, jamming one into my hand. Then they shoved me behind them and stood in a row gabbling some kind of incantation. After that, they were off, shouting at me to come along and stop dossing, pelting down the arched concrete space, madly sprinkling water as they ran and shoving me repeatedly so that I didn't tread inside the wet line, until Dave said, “East.” They stopped and gabbled another invocation, and then they charged on, sprinkling again, until Dave said, “South,” where they stopped and gabbled, too. Then we pelted off once more to gabble at West, then on round to North again. The water just lasted.

I hoped that was it, then, but no. We dumped the empty water shakers, and Arnold fetched out five things that looked like lighted candles but were really electric torches. Neat things. They must have had strange batteries, because they flickered and flared just like real candles as we raced around to East once more with our feet booming echoes out of the concrete corridor. This time when Dave said, “East,” Chick slammed his candle torch down on the floor and stood gabbling. I nearly got left behind there because I was staring at Chick drawing what looked like a belt knife and pulling it out as if it were toffee or something so that it was like a sword, which he stood holding point upward in front of his face. I had to sprint to catch the others up, and I only reached them as Dave was singing out, “South!” They shed Pierre and his candle there, and as we pelted off, Pierre was pulling a knife out into a sword, too.

At West it was Dave's turn to stand pulling a knife into a sword and gabbling. Arnold and I rushed on together to North. Luckily, Arnold was so big he was not much of a runner, and I could keep up. I'd no breath left by then. When we got round to Arnold's bag again, he plonked down his candle and remarked, “I hold North because I'm the strongest. It's the most dangerous ward of all.” Then, instead of drawing his belt knife, he took my candle torch away and passed me a gigantic salt shaker.

I stared at it.

“All round again with this,” Arnold said. “Make sure it's a continuous line and that you keep
outside
the line.”

It's one of
those
dreams, I thought. I sighed. I grabbed the salt and set off the other way to make a change.

“No,
no
!” he howled. “Not widdershins, you fool!
Deosil!
And run. You've got to get round before the Prince lands!”

“Making my third four-minute mile,” I said.

“Pretty well,” he agreed. “Go!”

So off I went, pouring salt and stumbling over my own feet as I tried to see where I was pouring it, past Chick, standing with his sword like a statue, past soldiers I was almost too busy to notice, who were on guard about every fifty feet, and on round to Pierre, also standing like a statue. When I got to him, I could hear the nearby blatting of a flier and cheering in the distance. Pierre shot me an angry, urgent look. Obviously, this Prince had more or less landed by then. I sped on, frantically sprinkling salt, getting better at it now. Even so, it seemed an age before I got round to Dave and another age before I got back to Arnold again. The cheering overhead was like thunder by then.


Just
about made it,” Arnold said. He had a sword by now and was standing like the others, looking sort of remote, behind his candle-thing. “Make sure the line of salt joins up behind me, then put the shaker back in the bag and get on guard.”

“Er …” I said, “I'm not sure—”

He more or less roared at me. “Didn't they teach you
anything
at the academy? I shall lodge a complaint.” Then he seemed to pull himself together and sort of recited at me, the way you might tell a total idiot how to dial 999 in an emergency, “Choose your spot, go into a light trance, enter the otherwhere, pick up your totem beast, and go on patrol with it. If you see anything out of the ordinary—
anything at all
—come and tell me. Now go and get on with it!”

“Right,” I said. “Thanks.” I threw the salt shaker into the bag and wandered away. Now what? I thought. It was fairly clear to me that what we had been doing in such a hurry was casting a circle of magic protection around this French cricket stadium, but it struck me as pretty boring, mass-produced sort of magic. I couldn't see how it could possibly work, but I supposed it kept them happy, them and this Prince of theirs. The stupid thing was that I had been dying to learn magic. Part of the way I kept trying to walk to other worlds was to do with my wanting, above anything else, to be a proper magician, to
know
magic and be able to work it for myself. Now here was this dream making it seem just boring. And probably useless.

That's dreams for you, I thought, wandering on through the tunnel under the seats. Since I had no idea how to do the stuff Arnold had told me, the only thing I
could
do was to keep out of his sight, and out of Chick's sight, too, on round the curve in the east. I trudged past the first soldier on guard, and as soon as the curve of the passage hid him from sight, I simply sat down with my back to the outside wall.

It was a pretty dismal place, full of gritty, gloomy echoes and gritty, gloomy concrete smells. People had used it to pee in, too, which didn't help. It felt damp. As I was soaked with sweat from all that running, I began to feel clammy almost at once. At least it wasn't dark. There were orange striplights in the concrete ceiling and holes in the concrete back wall. The holes were high up and covered with grids, but they did let in slants of bright sun that cut through the gritty air in regular white slices.

Not much to look at except a line of salt, I thought. At least I was better off than Arnold and the rest. I didn't have to keep staring at a sword. And for the first time I began to wonder how long we'd all have to stay here. For the whole time it took this Prince to play in a Test Match? Those could go on for
days
. And the frustrating thing about this dream, I thought, as I heard clapping far away over my head, was the way I never set eyes on this Prince all the fuss was about.

TWO

I think I went to sleep. It made sense to think so. I was quite jet-lagged by then, given I'd set off before supper, arrived at dawn, and then flown all the way to the south of France, followed by running round the stadium three times.

But it didn't quite feel like sleep. I felt as if I got up, leaving myself sitting there, and walked off along an inviting bluish, shady path I'd suddenly noticed. This path led upward and sort of sideways from the concrete passage, out of the smells and clamminess, into a cool, rustling wood. This was such a relief that I didn't feel tired anymore. I stretched and snuffed up the cool green smells—pine trees and a sharp, gummy scent from head-high ferns, and bark and leaves and bushes that smelled almost like incense—and I kept on walking, deeper into the wood and uphill.

The incense bushes in front of me started rustling. Then the ferns swayed.

I stopped. I kept very still. I could feel my heart banging. Something was definitely coming. But I was still not prepared for it when it did.

The ferns parted, and a smooth black head slid out and stared me in the face with huge yellow eyes. For just one instant I was nose to nose with an enormous black panther.

Then I was up a tree, the tallest tree I could find.

In between was a blur of absolute terror. If I
think
about it, carefully, I think the panther sort of said,
Oh, hallo
, in wordless panther talk, and I'm fairly sure I screamed. And I do, slightly, remember staring around with tremendous speed to choose the best tree and then listening to my own breath coming in sort of shrieks while I shot up this tree, and I even remember yelling, “Ouch!” when I peeled one of my nails back on the way up.

Then it all stops with me sitting shakily astride a branch watching the panther coming up after me.

“Bugger!” I said. “I forgot panthers could climb trees!”

Naturally we can
, it said. It settled on the branch opposite mine with one great paw hanging and its tail swinging.
What are we doing up here?
it asked.
Hunting?

BOOK: The Merlin Conspiracy
6.22Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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