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, gum
my 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?
There was no doubt it was talking to me. Well, I thought, this was a dream. So I gave in to it and answered, “No. I’m supposed to be keeping watch in case anything supernatural attacks the Prince.”
The panther yawned. It was as if its head split open into a bright pink maw fringed with long white fangs. Boring, it said. I hoped you might want to go hunting.
“Let’s do that in a bit,” I said. I was feeling weak with terror still. “I agree,” I said, hoping to persuade it to go away, “keeping watch is really boring. I may have to be here for hours.”
Oh, well, the panther said. It let down its three other huge paws, put its black chin on the branch, and went to sleep.
After a while when I couldn’t look away from it in case it went for my throat, and another while when I didn’t dare move in case it woke up and went for my throat, I sort of got used to the fact that I was sitting in a tree facing a big, black, sleeping panther, and I began to look about. Carefully and slowly. Arnold had said “pick up your totem beast,” and I supposed that this panther might be my totem beast, but I didn’t believe this, not really. As far as I knew, totem beasts were a part of a shamanistic magician’s mind, which meant they were not really real, and I could see the panther was as real as I was. Anyway, I wasn’t going to take a chance on it. I sat and turned my head very slowly.
I was looking out over the tops of trees, but that was only the ordinary part of wherever I was. Tilted away sideways from the wood was—well, it was a bit like a diagram in lights. The nearest part of the diagram was a low-key misty map of a town, and beyond that was a sparkling, electric hugeness that seemed to be sea. Nearer to me, at the edge of the lines and blobs that made the town, I could see a striking turquoise oval. It was like a lighted jewel, and it had a blob of whiter light at each end of it and two more blobs in the middle of each side.
“Oh!” I said, out loud without thinking. “Their magic did work! Those blobs must be them—Arnold and Dave and his mates!”
The panther twitched and made a noise in its throat. I didn’t know if it was a growl, or a snore, or its way of agreeing with me, but I shut up at once. I went on staring without speaking. It was fascinating, that lighted diagram. Little bright sparkles moved inside the turquoise oval of the stadium, and one brighter one stood still quite near the middle. I wondered if that was the Prince. But it could have been one of the umpires. After a bit I noticed moving smudges of light out in the sea that were probably ships, and one or two quicker ones moving in straight lines that I thought were aircraft, because some of them made lines across the town. They were all in the most beautiful colors. None of them struck me as dangerous. But then I wouldn’t have known what a threat to the Prince looked like if it came up and hit me.
Anyway, I was stuck in this tree until the panther decided to leave. So I simply sat and stared, and listened to the rustlings and birdcalls in the wood, and felt as peaceful as anyone could be stuck up a tree a yard away from a lethal black panther.
The panther suddenly woke up.
I flinched, but it wasn’t attending to me. Someone coming, it remarked, head up and all four paws on the branch again. Then, like a big slide of black oil, it went noiselessly slithering away down the tree.
My forehead got wet with relief. I listened, but I couldn’t hear a thing. So, rather cautiously, I let myself down from branch to branch, until I could see the panther crouched along one of the very lowest boughs below me. Below that, I could see bare pine-needled ground stretching away to bushes. Another animal was walking across the pine needles, another big cat, only this one was a spotted one, with long legs and a small head. This cat was so full of muscles that it seemed almost to walk on tiptoe. Its ugly spotted tail was lashing. So was the panther’s, only more elegantly. The cat looked up, past the panther, and straight at me. Its eyes were wide and green and most uncomfortably knowing. When it got near the tree, it simply sat down and went on staring, jeeringly.
Then a man came out of the bushes after it.
He’s a hunter, I thought. This was because of the way he walked, sort of light and tense and leaning forward ready for trouble, and because of the deep tan on his narrow face. But I couldn’t help noticing that he was dressed in the same kind of suede that Arnold and his pals were wearing, except that his leathers were so old and greasy and baggy that you could hardly see they were suede. Hunters can dress in leather, too, I thought. But I wondered.
He came up beside the ugly spotted cat and put his hand on its head, between its round, tufted ears. Then he looked slowly up through the tree until he saw me. “Nick Mallory?” he said quietly.
I wanted to deny it. I wanted to say my name was really Nichothodes Koryfoides, which is true. But Nick Mallory was what I had chosen to be when Dad and I adopted one another. “Yes,” I said. I meant it to sound cautious and adult, but it came out weak and defiant and resentful.
“Then come down here,” said the man.
As soon as he said it, I was down, standing on the pine needles under the tree, only a couple of feet away from him and his cat. That close, I could tell he was some kind of magic user, and one of the strongest I’d ever come across, too. Magics fair sizzled off him, and he felt full of strange skills and strong craft and deep, deep knowledge. He knew how to bring me down from the tree with just a word. And he’d brought the panther down with me, I realized. The poor beast was busy abasing itself, crawling on its belly among the pine needles and pressing itself against my leg as if I could help it, absolutely terrified of that spotted cat. The cat was studying it contemptuously.
“I had quite a bit of trouble locating you,” the man said to me. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m supposed to watch the boundaries for anything that threatens the Prince,” I said. My throat had gone choky with fright. I had to cough before I could say, “You’re threatening him, aren’t you?”
He shrugged and looked around as if he was getting his bearings. To my surprise, although there were trees all round us, I could still see the lighted turquoise oval of the stadium and the sea shimmering beyond it. It seemed like something on a different wavelength from the wood. But the chief thing I noticed was that the man’s profile was like a zigzag of lightning. I’d never seen anything more dangerous—unless it was that spotted cat. I kept as still as I could.
“Oh, the Plantagenate Empire,” the man said. “I’ve no need to threaten that Prince. He’s going to lose the French part of his empire, and most of his German holdings, too, as soon as he comes to the throne, and he’ll be dead a couple of years after that. No, it was you I wanted. I’ve been offered a fee to eliminate you.”
“Yes,” the man said, staring at me with his dreadful, keen eyes. They were the kind of brown that is almost yellow. “Yes, it surprises me, too, now I see you. Perhaps it’s because of something you might do later. You strike me as completely useless at the moment, but you must have some fairly strong potential or that panther there wouldn’t have befriended you.”
Befriended! I thought. What befriending? I was so indignant that my tongue came unstuck, and I managed to husk out, “I—He’s not real. He’s my totem animal.”
The man looked surprised. “You think she’s what? What gave you that idea?”
“They told me to go into a light trance and look for my totem in the otherwhere,” I said. “It’s the only explanation.”
The man gave an impatient sigh. “What nonsense. These Plantagenate mages do irritate me. All their magic is this kind of rule-of-thumb half-truth! You shouldn’t believe a word they say, unless you can get it confirmed by an independent source. Magic is wide, various, and big. If you really think that animal is just a mind product, touch her. Put your hand on her head.”
When that man told you to do something, you found yourself doing it. Before I could even be nervous, I found myself bending sideways and putting my hand on the panther, on the broad part of her head between her flattened ears. She didn’t like it. She flinched all over, but she let me do it. She was warm and domed there, and her black hair wasn’t soft like a cat’s; it was harsh, with a prickly end to each hair. She was as real as I was. I don’t think I’d ever felt such a fool. The man was looking at me with real contempt, and on top of it all I hadn’t noticed that the panther was a female.
The Merlin Conspiracy Page 4