The Merlin Conspiracy

by Diana Wynne Jones

  My greatest fear was that nothing would happen. But I knew I was doing something when a great cluster of transparent people sped out of the lines of cloud and hung in the air above me, attracted by the magic. I was afraid that Alicia or one of the other pages might notice them, but they didn’t. Toby distracted them all by sinking his teeth into Alicia’s hand as it gripped Grundo’s ear. All the pages crowded in to separate Toby from Alicia and Alicia from Grundo—but quietly, because you didn’t make a noise in front of the King. I was able to move to one side and continue unbinding.

  The King was still sitting there. I don’t think he noticed the salamanders. He didn’t seem to see that the false Merlin’s nose was bleeding. The false Merlin wiped the blood carefully on a handkerchief and handed it to Sybil. “Blood for a summoning,” he said to her. “We’ve no salamanders. We want that Old Power here instead, quickly.” He went and stood with one foot on Nick’s back, in case Nick recovered and tried to get up, while Sybil waved the red-blotched hanky about and began chanting.

  “I can’t think why they think they need any more magic here,” Grundo grunted, appearing by my shoulder with one ear bleeding. I always forget how good Grundo is at slithering out of scraps. But at that stage I was only two-thirds of the way through the Great Unbinding. I made frantic noddings and face twistings at him not to distract me. His mouth made an oh of quiet understanding. Then he ducked out of my sight, and several of the pages yelped almost at once.

  Gratefully I went on to the last third of the unbinding. Slowly and carefully I undid nine twists and three knots. Then I was done, right on to the very last, which was to pull an imaginary straight unknotted string through my fingers, to show that it was now free of all tangles. I wished that had been all. But I had to go on to feed all my flower files to the vortex, while my head spun with it, and pages heaved and gasped to one side of me, and Sybil, out in the open, got on with her summoning, too.

  I don’t know how long I took to feed everything into the vortex. On one level, it took no time at all, just a crazy unreeling of file after file, plant after dry, thorny plant rushing through my mind and speeding into the twisted clouds, while I said to each, “I hereby call you to raise the land.” On another level I could see myself reaching out and slowly pulling to myself layer after layer of different magics. Sometimes I paused to marvel at them. Songs and thoughts looked truly beautiful, all intricate, curled-up colors, but when I turned them round to look at the other side, they were quite drab, and some had oozing nastinesses. Time and eternity took my breath away, though I tried not to look too hard at the demons that rode with them.

  And I remember being slightly astonished at all the beings waiting in the wood where Toby had promised to go. I recognized the kingly man in the red cloak. He was on horseback, surrounded by his knights and standard bearers. I knew he was the Count of Blest. But there were ladies with him that I didn’t know and large numbers of tall people who didn’t look quite as solid as the Count and his court. They all looked relieved when they saw me standing between two trees and called out to know if it was time. “Yes,” I said. “My cousin is not able to come, but it is time.” They started to move at once, while the trees around them tossed and surged.

  I called good things and bad things, and things that were neither, birds, animals, growing things, and things that never changed. I called the sun. I called stars, moon, and planets. Last of all, I called the world, and Blest rolled toward me.

  Everything seemed to come loose.

  The wonder of it was that this only seemed to take seconds. When I finished, Sybil was still chanting, the false Merlin still had his foot on Nick’s back, and Grundo and Toby were still silently wrestling with Alicia and the other pages. Nobody seemed to notice what was happening.

  What was happening was terrifying. Blest was rolling loose among the universes, shedding strips of magic like bandages unwinding from a mummy. I saw the islands we had crossed behind Helga dipping and spinning. One actually pitched sideways and sank. Another seemed to be melting, and nearly all of them had lost their clear, luminous colors. They were patchy, with brown clouds.

  I saw London walk among his towers and carefully put his huge foot down on a house, crushing it to brick dust.

  I saw a huge wave rise out of a sea on another world and rush across a land full of brown people in houses. There were no houses after that. In another world a vast being standing guard on the top of a green hill turned and looked doubtfully over his shoulder. He seemed to have lost his purpose. After a while he came down from his hill and walked across the plains to meet three other beings like him, who looked equally lost. I was sorry about that, because this was the world where we had accidentally arrived in that library, and they depended for their magics on these Guardians of the Four Quarters. When I looked at another world, I saw that all its magic had entered its railway lines, causing incredible confusion. And I turned to a world of giant canyons, just in time to see a glistening xanadu collapse into the caves beneath it, followed by half the rocky landscape in great plumes of dust. That horrified me because I had no idea if my parents were in there or not.

  Here, in the Islands of Blest, lines of power were winking out, and from every river there was rising a slimy, shell-covered head. “Free!” they growled. “Loose at last!” and their waters began to rise. Manchester, in a red dress, was hurriedly building city walls. Things that had been buried under the Pennines for centuries were crawling out from under confining blocks of magic. Not all these things were evil, but all over the country, moors and forests were becoming strange and powerful as the layers of magic shredded away. And the sea was rising.

  What have I done? I thought. What have I done?

  The magic was still shredding. In my head the file Gorse: home and country continued to unreel into the vortex long after the others had gone. It made sense. The magic of the Islands of Blest had more layers than anywhere else. I watched the strips unwind, layer after layer, until I thought for a moment that I was looking at the bedrock of our country. It was a brown-green lumpy shape, right at the bottom of things. Then it stirred, stretched, and sat up. It shook loose hair back and smiled at me, and I recognized the lady who had taken away the virtue from the Inner Garden.

  “I never knew you were alive before,” I said.

  “Of course I am,” she said. “So is every land. Thank you. Now I can put things back as I want them.” She lay back, like someone settling into a really comfortable sofa, and began pulling bands and scarves of magic across herself, slowly and carefully, looking at each strip before she laid it on herself. Some she shook her head at and threw away, some she put aside to lay on later, and some she smiled at and gave special treatment to, like wrapping them round her shoulders or her head.

  Perhaps I haven’t destroyed everything, then, I thought.

  A tremendous roar came out of the east. It was like an answer.

  I had never heard anything that remotely resembled that noise, but Nick tells me that he thought it was a jet plane, flying very low. He was half delirious at that stage, shaken with shudders of pain, and he says he thought he was back on Earth suddenly. But the roar came a second time, and he realized what it was. And where he was, which he says was not so good. Everyone turned to look to the east, even Sybil, but no one could see anything for the huge bank of mist rolling up from there.

  The dragon came flying above the mist, against the blue sky. He was white as chalk and touched gold from the sinking sun. He was enormous. The King stood up, which was fitting, although everyone else half crouched, except for the false Merlin, who stared up at the dragon, dumb-founded. The Archbishops fell to their knees and prayed, as did quite a few of the priests in the crowd.

  The dragon came flying on, and he was even more enormous. When he was about half a mile away, his huge cry came again. There were words in it, but they were too loud to understand. Nick raised his head and shouted back, “This one! The one standing on me!”

  “AH!” said the dra
gon. Everyone clearly saw the flame flicker in its huge mouth.

  Then it was there. It cut through the vortex as if that did not exist, and hundreds of transparent folk sped away outward, frantic to get out of its way. For a moment it was like being under a great ivory-colored tent. The dragon’s wings were so huge that they covered Stonehenge in one direction and all the cars and buses of the Court in the other.

  A shining white claw came down from the ivory hugeness—it shone like marble, but you could see it was hard as granite—and hooked itself around the false Merlin. He screamed, a high, childlike scream, as he was snatched away upward. The gigantic wings beat with a dull boom, like thunder, or strong wind in a tent, pulling the mist in across us. It started to snow then, in lines that twisted with the vortex, filling everyone’s hair with furry whiteness, but I honestly think nobody really noticed. We were all staring up at the dragon as he rose, huge and white and perfect, dangling the tiny dark figure of the false Merlin in one clawed front foot.

  He circled with his prey, round against the sun, until he was far out over the plain, to the west. Then he dropped the false Merlin. Most of us watched the little dark shape hurtle downward. Most of us strained to hear the noise of that shape hitting the ground, but there was no sound. It was too far away.

  But Sir James strode through the whirling snow and came up to Sybil beside the two Archbishops. He didn’t bother with them, nor with the King and Prince Edmund, who were both standing by Sybil. He said to Sybil, “Much better. Now there’s only two of us to share everything. Let’s get this sacrifice over, shall we? Shall I kill him, or do you still insist on your ritual?”

  Now the false Merlin was gone, Sybil seemed much more herself. She drew herself up. “My ritual—” she began. She stopped, looking irritable, and moved aside.

  My grandfather Gwyn was there, looming above her on his white mare. His cloak clapped about in the snow and strips of bloody horsehide swirled from his standard. All his people were behind him, dimly visible in the mist and the snow.

  “About time, too!” Sybil shouted up at him. “You should obey when I call! Kill this boy at once. We want your stake through his heart according to the ritual.”

  Nick sat up at this and scrambled round on his knees.

  My grandfather Gwyn did not look at him. He said to Sybil, “No. I warned you, but you never listened, did you now? You have called me three times already. Now you have called me yet again, and I have the right to call you. And I now call you.”

  Here, for a while, so many things happened at once that I have had to ask the others what they saw and did. I was mostly watching Sybil. I think she truly saw Grandfather Gwyn for the first time then. She stared up at him, and her face was like uncooked prettybread, blotched with red over yellow-white. Her mouth came open, and she flopped to her knees with her hands clasped. “Spare me,” she said.

  “No,” my grandfather said. “From now on, you follow me.”

  He started to ride forward. Sybil was scrambling round on her knees to obey him—she never argued or even tried to protest—when more riders loomed through the fog and the snow, coming from the opposite direction. The one in front was wearing a dark red cloak which billowed and whirled around his armor. He saw Grandfather Gwyn and his people and stopped. I had just a glimpse of the elegant, practiced way his gloved left hand drew up his reins, and of the way his horse tossed its head and champed, not at all willing to stop, while the rider raised his right hand courteously to my grandfather. Then I had to look at the upheaval going on beside me.

  Grundo says that a piece of the wet, snowy grass unfolded beside him to let a crowd of Little People come swarming out on their bent-back legs. I think they were the ones I had felt watching so anxiously. They wanted Grundo and Toby for some reason. Grundo says he had no idea why, but he knew at once that they wanted him. He grabbed Toby and got clear. I didn’t see any of that. All I saw was a seething struggle between Little People and snow-sodden royal pages, human youngsters being seized around the legs and bitten by long sharp teeth, and the humans kicking and punching in return. I had a flying glimpse of Grundo with his hair filled with snow, forging through the other side of the struggle, and I nearly went to help him. Then I thought that this was what he had bespelled me to do, and I stopped. And then I thought that you helped people if they needed it, and I started forward again. But it was over by then. The Little People dragged Alicia away through the open fold and the fold slid shut.

  Do you know, I envied Alicia! I still do. What an interesting thing to happen to her, I thought. It’s not fair!

  When I looked out into the driving, spiraling snow, Grandfather Gwyn had almost finished riding round the open space, selecting people from the crowd to follow him. He had Sybil and most of the other Court wizards walking obediently behind his line of horses by then. I think one of the other people may have been Toby’s father.

  NICK

  I suppose I’d better tell this bit. Roddy says she was busy trying to convince the royal pages that Alicia had gone for good. And they wanted to know where, but she had no more idea than they did.

  I was so dazed and scared, and sore and frozen, that it all seemed more like a tumultuous dream than anything. I sat on the sopping grass, with snow catching on my eyelashes, and watched Gwyn ap Nud greet the Count of Britain—at least, they call him the Count of Blest here, but I call him the Count of Britain. I think he was King Arthur once, but I’m not sure.

  They were very courtly and stately with one another, and you could see they were equals. The Count of Blest in his red cloak said, “Well met in this time of change, Prince. Are you taking all here?”

  Gwyn ap Nud bowed. He has the most terrible grim smile. “Well met indeed, Majesty. I am taking in my harvest, but there is one that must be yours.” He pointed with his flapping grisly horsehead to the man Roddy says was Sir James. Then he rode away, and I didn’t see him anymore.

  The Count of Blest beckoned with his free hand to someone behind him. “Take him and tie him to the tail of the last horse,” he said. And that person—he was a big, muscular knight—leaned down and dragged Sir James away to somewhere behind. Sir James was going on about this being an outrage, but nobody took any notice, and after a while he stopped, and I didn’t see him anymore either. But the Count of Blest began slowly riding on again, while I sat and noticed in a dazzled way that the swirls of snow from the blizzard were following exactly the lines of the vortex and sort of centering over that smoking bucket that Japheth had left standing there.

  I looked up because the King—the present-day King of Blest, that is—was trying to catch hold of the Count of Blest’s bridle. The poor man looked almost as miserable as I felt. His face was the bright red that you go in snow, and his beard was fluffy with white flakes. “Forgive me,” he said, looking up at the Count of Blest. “I haven’t exactly done well, have I?”

  “Others have done almost as badly,” the Count of Blest said, quite kindly, riding on. He kept going, so that the King had more or less to trot beside him. “It is no easy matter to hold a kingdom in trust.”

  “I know, I know!” the King cried out. “I’ll do better from now on, I swear! How long have I got?”

  I think this was what the King really wanted to know, but the Count of Blest answered, “That is not a question I should answer or one you should ask. But choose your advisers more carefully in future. Now, forgive me. I have to ride the realm.”

  He rode away, and lots of tall horse legs went past me, some with armed men, some with incredible-looking ladies, and some with weirder people. The King hurried after them for a while, looking snubbed and despairing, and then gave up. Endless riders went mistily past us both.

  At the same time—Grundo says it had been going on all this while—hosts of the transparent folks came hurtling down from the spirals of snow, and a lot of others came with them, who looked to be the dark, riotous, bloodthirsty invisibles that usually only came out at night. And the whole lot came sweeping crosswise
through the circle of people who had been watching. They kept pouring through, hundreds of them, thousands. They ought to have got in the way of the Count of Blest’s riders, but in some queer way, they seemed to be on a different band of space. I sat watching them streaming by me and all the people who hadn’t run for cover in those buses, including the two Archbishops, running away from them madly. And, at the same time, I watched princely knights and great ladies riding through the same spot. It was really odd.

  The dragon came back in the midst of it all. Everything got darker underneath him. When I looked up through the driving, winding snow, I could faintly see the vast gray shape of him hovering above the weather. His huge voice boomed down to me.

  “GIVE ME THE END OF IT.”

  I knew what he meant. I got up and tottered through the streams of transparent people, and among horses’ legs that went past without touching me, to Japheth’s smoking bucket. Grundo and Toby were there, trying to shelter behind it—not that they could, because the snow was blinding in from all directions. I was really glad to see them. I was shaky all over, and I kept jerking with the salamander magic. I knew I couldn’t manage on my own.

  “Help me,” I said. “We’ve got to get the end of this vortex up to the dragon.”

  They looked pretty scared, but they put out their arms and helped me try to lift it. It was surprisingly easy. Toby said, “It’s quite loose!” It was, and it wasn’t heavy either, just awkward. I had to lift it by myself the last foot or so, because I was so much taller than they were, and it hummed and slithered and wobbled in my arms, but I managed to hang on to it until a great shiny claw reached down through the storm and hooked it off me.