Neither Wolf nor Raven were very good at lying. Maximilian, however, was a master of deceit.
‘Our teachers only ever speak to us to tell us facts, sadly,’ he said. ‘It would be quite exciting if they ever invited us to join a clandestine group. But I can’t see it ever actually happening.’
Raven and Wolf exchanged a half-smile, picked up plates with large slices of chocolate cake and followed Maximilian into his room.
‘Right,’ said Maximilian, once the door was closed. ‘Let’s look up cleric in the book.’
‘I don’t know how you lie like that,’ said Raven with admiration. ‘I go red and blotchy if I try to say anything that isn’t true.’
‘I must admit, I am quite proud of my acting abilities,’ said Maximilian. ‘I can get away with a lot while my mum still doesn’t know I’m a mage.’
‘When are you going to tell her?’ asked Raven.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Never?’
‘I just can’t be a cleric,’ said Wolf glumly, flicking through the Repertory of Kharakter, Art & Shade. ‘It sounds wrong. Surely I’m more likely to be a hunter? Or, I don’t know, an explorer. Maybe a guide . . .’
‘Give that to me,’ said Maximilian. ‘You’ll never find the bit you want. Aha. Here we are. Hmmm. Interesting. Listen to this: “The cleric is the wisest of all the kharakters. He or she is concerned with spiritual matters and in particular reading and putting into practice spiritual texts. At higher levels, he or she will be able to change things with prayer, or even, rarely, to create new philosophies. The cleric is skilled at meditation and connecting with the secret parts of the universe inaccessible to less spiritual seekers. The cleric may also become greatly adept of the martial arts. The cleric’s emphasis is on wisdom, although this tends to be from books and spiritual journeys rather than experience in the physical world. The cleric is good at listening to people’s problems and giving wise advice. The cleric is a deeply moral kharakter, who always does what he or she believes is right, even if this is difficult, or flies in the face of so-called ‘conventional wisdom’. Whenever difficult decisions must be taken, a cleric will be required. Clerics are not frightened to enter the unknown, and to take risks that might lead to new wisdom.”’
‘Skilled at meditation?’ said Wolf. ‘But I’ve never meditated in my life.’
‘Oooh – I can teach you how to meditate,’ said Raven. ‘I think Effie’s good at it as well. “Secret parts of the universe” sounds amazing! And martial arts!’
‘But I’m not spiritual,’ said Wolf, still baffled. ‘At least, I didn’t think I was spiritual . . .’
‘The emphasis is on wisdom,’ said Maximilian. ‘And you have been reading all those books lately.’
‘Maybe,’ said Wolf, distractedly. He’d started re-reading the entry for cleric, in particular the different kinds of magic they could do. Candle magic. Prayer magic. Transformational prayer. Transcendent magic. Flying battles. What were those things? Wolf had never thought he would ever be able to do proper magic – he’d just thought that being a warrior meant being able to wield magical weapons and attack people’s M-currency.
The cleric is one of the most disciplined of all the kharakters, Wolf read on, and can also be very secretive. Their friends are often surprised when they discover how deeply the cleric thinks about things, and in particular how much he or she yearns for good. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad match for him after all. And the cleric’s boon had worked on him. But spiritual and wise? This was going to take some getting used to.
‘I wonder what my art is,’ Raven said to Maximilian. ‘I haven’t found it yet. Probably never will. He looks pretty attached to that book.’
Wolf had found a case-study of a warrior cleric and was reading it avidly. He hadn’t thought such a combination would even work, but there was quite a list in the Repertory: Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King and Joan Baez were among them. There was also some important mythical figure called Arjuna. Most people assume that peaceful religious people don’t really fight, the Repertory went on. Wolf thought back to his conversation with Aizik: there was a big difference between violence for its own sake and fighting for what you believe in. He’d proved you can fight without any violence at all.
‘How’s your spider?’ Maximilian asked Raven.
‘A bit better after I did the stuff from the book I found in the University Library,’ she said. ‘There was a special concoction of fennel and lavender that I had to make. And a spell, too. I’m supposed to be finding a familiar – witches need them to progress to higher levels than Neophyte according to Lexy, and Dr Green’s magic class. So I’m trying really hard to find one. I know loads of animals, but none of them will agree. I thought one of the spiders might do it once the sick one had healed, but no.’
‘Why not?’
‘They want to be free, which I completely understand, of course. I absolutely wouldn’t want to exploit anyone. I think in the olden days becoming a familiar was seen by the Cosmic Web as a sort of servitude or even enslavement. It’s complicated.’ She sighed.
‘What about Echo?’ asked Maximilian.
‘A familiar has to come with you virtually everywhere,’ said Raven. ‘It’s a big undertaking. It suits smaller animals better. I don’t think a horse could do it. But I’ll keep trying. Sooner or later I’ll find someone to help me. Apparently you’re supposed to know as soon as you meet your familiar. You don’t even have to ask. It’s supposed to be a bit like love at first sight.’
Raven went back to her pager. She’d been trying to contact Lexy for ages now.
‘How are you getting on?’ Maximilian asked Wolf, who was still reading the Repertory avidly.
‘I don’t know,’ said Wolf. ‘I mean, at first I thought it was nuts. But now . . .’
‘We should test you,’ said Maximilian. ‘There should be a series of tests at the back of this edition, I think. Oh yes, here we go. Cleric’s test. Brilliant. All right. What is the thing that links all religions?’
‘A belief in what is good?’
‘Yep. More or less. Um . . . Name a type of incense.’
‘Sandalwood.’ Wolf frowned. ‘I have literally no idea how I know that,’ he said. ‘How weird.’
‘Oooh, I love sandalwood,’ said Raven dreamily, looking up from the pager. ‘Sandalwood and rose.’
‘What’s your favourite colour?’
‘Blue.’
‘Excellent! Do you like silence?’
‘Yes.’
‘Being on your own?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you ever cheat or lie?’
‘No.’
‘Well, there you go,’ said Maximilian. ‘You’re a cleric!’
‘A warrior cleric,’ corrected Wolf.
‘Hmmm. Well, let’s hope your cleric’s skills will turn out to be useful in some way. You’re already useful as a warrior, of course.’
‘I just want to find my sister,’ said Wolf.
‘Maybe you should pray for her,’ suggested Raven. ‘No, don’t both look at me like that! Surely a cleric would be able to do things with prayer. I’m sure it says something like that in the Repertory. I do witch’s prayers, sometimes, although they’re different. But they can’t be that different.’
‘It’s got to be worth a try,’ said Wolf. ‘Except I don’t even know how to start.’
Just then there was a knock at the door. It was Odile telling them that Raven’s mum had come to pick her up.
‘I’d better go too,’ said Wolf.
‘Why don’t you stay here?’ said Odile. ‘Have the spare room.’
‘Are you sure, Nurse Underwood?’
‘You look like you could do with a warm night in a real house,’ she said, mysteriously.
How was it that mothers always knew so many things? And even about other people’s children too.
‘Ouch!’ exclaimed Terrence Deer-Hart, as Lady Tchainsaw pricked him yet again. ‘Be careful where you put those pins!’
‘Your robes
must be ready for Midwinter,’ said Lady Tchainsaw. She rolled her Rs powerfully, more than any actual Russian would ever do. Perhaps she missed home. Or perhaps she wasn’t even Russian, and that was why she was overdoing it. Her identity as an avant-garde poet was ever-changing, after all.
‘Oh well,’ said Terrence, ‘at least this is better than my last outfit.’
‘We will never speak of the other outfit ever again,’ said Lady Tchainsaw. ‘There.’ She made another adjustment. ‘You do not look too dreadful, which is a surprise. The master will be pleased.’
Terrence turned and looked at himself in the antique full-length mirror that took up most of one wall in Lady Tchainsaw’s rooms in the East Wing of the university. He now resembled many of the other objects around him: old, rare and really quite evil. As well as a small cabinet full of dusty, enchanted-looking marionettes that rivalled the most terrifying specimens owned by the Puppet Man, Lady Tchainsaw had an impressive, although highly unnerving, collection of stuffed dead animals. These peered at Terrence in the mirror imploringly, their ghostly eyes all saying, Why did you kill me? and, in some cases, When you are asleep I will come and take revenge . . .
Terrence shook his head. Stopped looking at the animals. His eyes fell on another cabinet, but this one contained a selection of shrunken human heads, many with bits of hair still attached. There was a further cabinet full of skulls, large and small, another containing masks with enormous noses, and yet another with jars full of the preserved forms of long-dead slugs and toads.
‘Where do you get things like this?’ Terrence asked.
‘My travels.’
‘How do you get them through customs?’
‘I do not travel in the usual way, of course. Vodka?’
‘Thank you.’
While Lady Tchainsaw poured Terrence a glass of vodka over black ice, he walked around the room, over various rugs with the heads of the animals they’d been made from still attached, taking in many dark oil paintings of women who looked very much like Lady Tchainsaw in the past, or in fancy dress. It was as if she had lived for a very, very long time. Were they her relatives? Probably. But where were the men? Wasn’t there a kind of spider that ate her mates? Maybe it was something like that. Terrence shivered briefly, and then forgot he’d ever had the thought.
There was a small set of ancient-looking bookshelves with many leather-bound volumes. Terrence noted the titles of those that were out on the ebony coffee table: Travelling to Other Worlds and Pedesis for Beginners, both by Thomas Lumas. There was another slim volume by the same author called The Flow. The Flow. Was that one of the things he was supposed to denounce? Or was it one of the things he was supposed to embrace? It was so hard keeping up with everything you were supposed to do as a member of a diabolical secret society.
‘What is the Flow again?’ he asked Lady Tchainsaw.
He picked up the book and flicked through it. How strange: someone had written all over it, changing words and erasing whole passages.
She visibly shivered on hearing the word.
‘A vile thing,’ was all she could manage.
‘How do I resist it?’ said Terrence. ‘And why?’
‘Do you have inside you a desire to become a kaftan-wearing hippy vegetarian who thinks of others more highly than yourself?’ she asked. ‘Do you wish to live the life of a philosophy-obsessed tramp, never again to taste live oysters or enjoy the delights of flesh cooked in cream? Or warm, fresh blood baked into a pudding, or even raw . . .’
Terrence didn’t know what she was going on about. ‘No’ seemed the obvious answer to her questions, though. But did this mean he had to eat raw blood or not? ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘What’s exactly is a kaftan?’
‘You silly man,’ said Lady Tchainsaw. ‘You always miss the point of everything. In any case, the Flow is not going to exist for very much longer, if we have our way. It undoes what the norms call “evil”. It cleanses the person who goes inside it of what they call impurities, but what I call intellect. It wipes out critical thinking and makes you love everything. Imagine how exhausting it would be to love everything! It is to be avoided at all costs.’
‘What’s a norm?’
She sighed. ‘A normal person, you insipid berk. Of course, we advanced thinkers in the Diberi have a more sophisticated idea of morality, and what is good and bad and what is simply neutral. Is it evil to want to create a better universe for the few people who actually deserve it, while kicking the dross out of this world? Is it evil to want to take back control of our half of the Great Library and be masters of our own reality? Did you know that everything that exists here in the Realworld is controlled by a group of pathetic librarians in a remote corner of the Otherworld? Doesn’t that make you angry?’
Terrence did know this. Sort of. But it didn’t make him particularly angry because he had no idea what it meant. Skylurian had said something like this to him once, as well, but he hadn’t been listening properly because he had been hoping she might kiss him.
In fact, even though he missed Skylurian desperately, and even though he had vowed never to let another woman into his heart – particularly not one who kept calling him ‘silly’ and a ‘berk’ – Terrence was rather hoping now that Lady Tchainsaw might kiss him. Was he really that fickle? But perhaps the heart must move on. And Lady Tchainsaw was resplendent tonight in a black velvet gown and vintage velvet sock-boots with heels that looked alarmingly like the skulls of yet more dead creatures, but dipped in silver and placed on top of one another. She reminded Terrence in some way of dear, dead Skylurian. Which was nice, really.
Would she kiss him? It was the only question in Terrence’s mind.
She moved towards him. Was now the time?
‘Ouch!’ said Terrence again, as she slapped him. ‘What was that for?’
‘You are not paying attention. Why we are resting the ambitions of the Diberi on you, I have no idea. You are a stupid, vain, pathetic little man!’
‘I don’t mind if you’re horrible to me,’ said Terrence. ‘I don’t even mind if you slap me. But could you just give me a little . . .’
‘A little what?’
‘Kiss.’ The word came out like a tiny squeak.
‘I will kiss you afterwards,’ she said. ‘As a reward. Once our mission is complete. And, it should go without saying, only if our mission is successful.’
‘All right,’ said Terrence. ‘You’d better tell me again exactly what you want me to do.’
‘You need to understand the concept of pedesis,’ said Lady Tchainsaw, picking up the book by Thomas Lumas. ‘And you need to practise.’
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said Terrence. ‘Remind me what pedesis is again?’
‘Oh, you dim man. It’s when you enter someone’s consciousness and then travel through time by surfing on a great wave of their ancestors. Have you not been paying attention? The subject was dealt with most thoroughly in that novel I gave you.’
Novel? Oh yes. Terrence had forgotten to read it. Well, not forgotten exactly. He despised novels written by anyone other than himself and as a consequence had never read any contemporary fiction. Books written by dead people were all right in theory, but they were often long and boring and full of unnecessarily detailed descriptions of the past, with all the computers and satellites and cheap heating. He’d given up on this one by about page four.
‘But in any case,’ Lady Tchainsaw was saying, ‘all you need to do this time is enter the mind of Effie Truelove and find out how she goes to the Otherworld.’
Terrence imagined himself opening a sort of lid into Effie’s brain and climbing in. Wouldn’t she notice?
‘But how—’
‘It is your consciousness that travels,’ said Lady Tchainsaw. ‘Your body stays behind. I will follow you to the girl’s house. You must kidnap her and bring her to me. We will get her here, and then I will look after your body while your mind travels. We will give her a reason to go to the Otherworld, and you will foll
ow her.’
Look after his body? Could that involve kissing? But of course if Terrence’s mind was elsewhere he wouldn’t know anything about it.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘And then what?’
‘You may have to use your consciousness to affect her. Like mages do. You will need some serious practice. I have an awful feeling you will need more practice than you’re actually going to do, but it’s too late to change the plan now.’
‘I am a mage,’ said Terrence dreamily. ‘Dear Skylurian – I don’t believe you met – diagnosed me, and—’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Lady Tchainsaw. ‘I doubt you’ve even epiphanised. And even if you had you’d obviously be an elysian bard. All you’re interested in is pleasure, yourself and your terrible books.’
‘But mages—’
‘Mages are far darker and more mysterious than you’ll ever be, you desperate little nobody.’
‘Don’t you like me any more?’ said Terrence, pouting.
‘I like you exactly the same amount as I have always done. Now try to concentrate. This is very important. You will enter the girl’s mind using the technique described in this book, which I am going to lend you. You wait for a moment when she feels doubt or sadness. It is when she feels something that she is vulnerable. Then you slip in.’
‘Slip in?’
‘You are going to practise on others before I let you loose on the girl. You’ll need this.’ Lady Tchainsaw handed him a little vial of liquid. ‘And this.’ She gave him a little bottle of white pills. ‘Just please read the instructions carefully.’
It all sounded very complicated to Terrence. But he was sure it would be all right in the end. There’d be someone to remind him what to say and do. There was always someone like that in every situation. A publicist usually, or a bookseller, or a teacher. Yes, there’d probably be a nice teacher who could help. Or a technician, to adjust the volume on his microphone, like there always was at his book events. He drained the last of his vodka and smiled his most winning smile at Lady Tchainsaw.
19
By late on Sunday night, more cats had made it through the secret network of passageways and into the basement jazz club, out of sight of the butlers and maids on the other levels of the cats’ home. But not enough. There were hundreds of cats still upstairs in the ballroom drinking Pawsecco, or out of their heads on catnip and lying in cardboard boxes. Only around a hundred had made it into the basement. But one of these was Mirabelle.
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