The Merlin Conspiracy

  He was looking a bit irritable because the goat was jumping up and down under his hands, but he said quite coolly, “Bound to have come from somewhere near. Wrap one end of that round the creature’s neck—quickly.”

  I managed to put a loop of the rope more or less in the right place and then watched, fascinated, while the loose end wrapped itself round the rest of the rope and tied itself into a firm knot.

  “Thanks. Phew!” said Maxwell Hyde, standing up rather breathlessly. “Active, smelly beasts, goats are.” He walked off toward the house. I looked back uncertainly, but the other end of the rope was tied somehow to the shed door and the goat had already run out almost to the whole length of it. Impressive. “I must say,” he said, “that I did wonder a bit at that child running to the flier all covered in blood like that, but I was a bit tired just then.”

  Of course it had been blood. I felt a fool, thinking it had been embroidery.

  “Who was flying the machine?” Maxwell Hyde asked me.

  “It must have been the other prayerboy. Joel,” I said. “Unless they had a pilot with them.”

  “Could have been a boy,” he commented. “Went up in a surge like an amateur, full throttle, wagging about and so on. And where was Romanov in all this?”

  “He was in bed. He’s awfully ill,” I said protectively. “I know he was because I was running around inside shutting windows in case the Prayermaster tried to get in.” I heard myself saying this, and for the first time I wondered about myself. I had been looking after Romanov and protecting him ever since I got here, and yet Romanov had seemed ready enough to bump me off for money if he’d decided I deserved it. I wondered if it was magic, a protective spell perhaps, but I didn’t really think it was. I think I just admired him. I said, again protectively, “They really were wanting to kill him. They called him unclean. But all he’d done was give the embroidery workers stuff to block the radiation.”

  “So that’s what annoyed them,” Maxwell Hyde said thoughtfully. “Right. I have my own witness that you were locked inside with an elephant in front of the door, and I didn’t spot any blood on you, so you’re clear, I think.” He opened the door, and I followed him into the kitchen as he said, “But I only have your word for Romanov.”

  “I can tell you write detective stories,” I said.

  He turned round at me in a way that made me almost back out again. “I am also a Magid,” he said, “and it is my job to look into this.” He was full of authority. I felt as if I’d made a loud joke at a funeral. Then he relaxed a bit and said, “But I want your opinion about this first.” He led me to the living room, where he opened the door and said, “Well? What’s going on here?”

  I gawped a bit. It was like another shed in there now. The walls were warped, gray boards with green mossy stuff at the bottom, and there were holes in the splintered old wood of the floor. I could see water glinting and lapping through the holes. All the windows were crooked and draped with cobwebs, and as for the two chairs I had given him to sleep on … Well, it was lucky I’d draped a rug on them. They were two rotten old deck chairs, and the canvas in one was quite perilously split.

  “I think it must be because Romanov’s so ill,” I said.

  He frowned at me.

  “The island and everything else have been getting smaller and messier ever since I came here and found him,” I explained. “He must be too ill to sustain the magic or something.”

  “That’s most unlikely,” Maxwell Hyde told me sternly. “The island and its contents have to be self-sustaining or he’d never be able to go away. My guess is that it all ought to draw energy from each of the worlds it’s part of. Not much from each, to keep the balance. Cunning stuff. Romanov is good at it, lad. Where is he? We’d better look into this.”

  “Along here,” I said, and took him to the bedroom.

  It was awful in there. It had become a tiny, poky room with thick walls, dribbling wetness and covered with black flecks of mildew. It was a fug of sickness. Romanov looked like a corpse laid out on the narrow bed, almost as bad as the Prayermaster. His cheeks had sunk in, and his hair had got pasted to his head with sweat, so that his face was a sharp, gray, zigzag skull. I was relieved when I saw he was still breathing.

  “Faugh!” said Maxwell Hyde.

  I made for the window to get it open—or try to—but he barked at me, “Stop! Stand just where you are and don’t move!”

  I stood still, more or less treading on Romanov’s suede jacket. “What has he got?” I asked.

  “Let’s find out,” Maxwell Hyde said. He leaned over and, very delicately, touched Romanov’s sweaty forehead. He grunted, but Romanov never moved. Then, to my surprise, Maxwell Hyde took his fingers away, rather as if he were running them along an invisible line of string, and felt across through the air until he was all but touching my forehead. “Thought so,” he muttered, and felt away again, back to Romanov.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “Look,” he said. “Or can’t you see it?”

  I could see it as soon as he told me to look. There was a blurred line of filthy-looking grayish yellow light stretching between Romanov’s head and mine. It was really nasty. It made me almost want to throw up again. “Yes, I can see it,” I said.

  “How often did you touch him?” Maxwell Hyde asked sharply.

  I thought. As far as I could tell, I hadn’t. “I don’t think I did,” I said. “I didn’t quite like to. I mean …”

  “Well, that’s something to be thankful for, at least,” Maxwell Hyde said. “He could well be dead now if you had.” He stood up straight and stared me in the eye. “I’m going to want a detailed report from you, of everything you’ve done since you vanished from London, my lad. But before you do anything else, you’re going to oblige me by going and joining the elephant in the sea. Take all your clothes off, leave them on the beach for me to delouse, and go right under. There’s nothing like saltwater for cleaning black magic off. If you find the elephant’s in fresh water, don’t go in there. Find a piece that’s genuine sea. Go on. I’m going to be busy working on this end while you bathe.”

  I crawled away, feeling as if I’d been convicted of leprosy. I wondered if I’d ever like myself again. Even the sight of Mini on her side in crystal blue water, spraying her own back through her trunk, failed to cheer me up.

  “Is that water salt?” I asked her.

  “Very,” she said merrily. “It makes me sneeze.”

  I tasted it untrustingly, and it was. Very. It practically skinned my tongue. In fact, it was so salty and so easy to swim in that I wondered whether Romanov had included a piece of the Dead Sea at this point. Mini was so delighted to have me in the water, too, that I began to feel quite a bit better quite soon. We churned about and threw swaths of water at one another. She rolled and I splashed.

  Eventually I looked up to see Maxwell Hyde on the grass, going carefully over my clothes. He was blowing into my shoes as I got out and went up to him.

  “That’s better,” he said. “Clothing’s clear. Let’s look at you. Turn round. Raise your arms. Bend down so that I can see the top of your head. Right. Fine. You’re clear, too, now,” he said, handing me a ragged old towel. “Get dry and get dressed.”

  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 vici
ous 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 tho
ugh 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?”