‘What shall I take to Babylon?
A handful of salt and grain,
Water, some wool for warmth on the way,
And a candle to make the road plain.
If you carry three things and use them right
You can be there by candle-light.’”
“Ah, of course!” I said. They should have been carrying the elements of life! I should have thought!”
“Kitchens,” said Zinka. As we sped that way, she panted out, “I’ve plenty of candles. Wool’s easy. So’s water. It’s the grain that’s going to make problems.”
After some blundering about in the hind parts of the hotel, we barged our way through steel doors into a vista of steel appliances, smelling strongly of fat that was not quite hot enough. I let Zinka take the lead here. Every Magid has a special feeling for his or her particular secrets and, besides, the only person on duty here was a weary fellow in a tall white hat. He would obviously respond better to Zinka than to me.
She set about him briskly. “It’s very important we have something with whole grains in it,” she told him. “Have you got any unmilled cereals?”
“Muesli?” suggested the bewildered chef.
“Too many extras in it,” Zinka said. “Wheat or oats or barley in grains is what we’re looking for.”
He did his best, poor fellow. His first offering comprised a packet of frozen sweetcorn, a bag of flour and a carton of porridge oats. Zinka smiled up at him, pink and silky, with her shoulder slithering bare, and made him try again. He came up with brown rice. “It might do at a pinch,” Zinka told him. “But we need it European if possible.” He came up with sesame seeds and groundsel, wholemeal bread and pumpernickel. Zinka took him kindly by the hand and led him away from the cupboards.
While they were gone, I found some plastic bags. There were cruets lined up by the hundred on a shelf near the door and I cavalierly emptied the salt out of them until I had a bagful. Then, furiously conscious of the candles dwindling on the top floor, I found a big strainer and attempted to sieve the porridge oats. Most of the grains were crushed, but I had succeeded in getting a couple of ounces of whole, uncrushed oat grains out of it when Zinka came hurrying back with a tin clutched to her chest. In it was a sparse rattling of wheat grains which the chef gloomily opined must have come off the outside of something.
“Oh good,” Zinka said, seeing what I had been doing. “If we combine yours and mine and top it up with groundsel, sesame and just a little of the rice, we should just about have two handfuls. Thanks, chef. I love you. Come on, Rupert.”
We sped back to the centre of the hotel, clutching our two plastic bags.
“I’m not sure what’s wrong with the other lift,” Zinka gasped, “but I’m afraid the far lift is my fault – and yours. You sure do put stasis on when you put it, Rupert. I couldn’t get it off.”
“Oh, is that all it is?” I said. That was a relief. I hadn’t fancied wading upstairs, through that party again. When we reached the lifts, it was an easy matter to whip the remains of my stasis off the lift where Rob had taken refuge and haul it down. We shot up to Floor Three in it, where I waited with it while Zinka picked up her rosy skirts and pelted off to her room for candles.
That wait was horrible. My watch said I had only been gone half an hour and I couldn’t believe it. I was afraid it had stopped. I was increasingly convinced that something had gone wrong, but whether it was something wrong in my room two floors above, or some terrible thing that had happened to Maree waiting semi-lifeless in a land of shadows, I had no idea. I just wished Zinka would hurry.
To do her justice, she did hurry. Two minutes later, she pelted up from the opposite direction with her arms full of candles – genuine beeswax: I smelt the honey – gasping out that the node seemed to have gone do-lally and her room was nearer this way now. I clapped us into the lift and we shot upwards.
More node activity, I thought. Gram White again. A thought struck me.
“By the way,” I said, as we whirled past Floor Four, “which of them do you think did which killing? They were both in it, I’m sure. There wasn’t time for one of them to do it all.”
“Women very seldom cut throats,” Zinka said decidedly. “She did the shooting.”
That fitted. Whoever shot at me had been slow, as if he – she – was not entirely used to handling a gun, whereas Gram White, who ran a factory making small-arms, must be quite an expert. “Thanks,” I said. “Then he’s the more dangerous of the two.”
“Don’t bank on it,” Zinka said, as the lift slowed. “She’s pure poison, to my mind.”
The door went back. We stormed out and ran again. And ran. And turned corner after corner, running.
And there was a vista of corridor, with my door open halfway along it and Will out in the corridor beside it, making a stooped and swooping chase after a madly running quack chick. Beyond him, in the distance, three people were walking briskly away: Gram White and Janine, with Nick between them.
Rupert Venables continued
Zinka and I stopped and looked at one another. “Someone’s done a working out here,” she said. “I can feel it.”
So could I feel it now. It was what White had been doing after he shouted outside my door. I knew I should have felt it when I left, but I had been in too much of a hurry. I had slipped up again. I cursed. The working had been designed to fetch Nick out of my room the next time the door opened. Will told us the way of it when we walked slowly up to him and he stood up, red and exasperated, after shooing the quack chick back inside.
“I thought the damn door was shut,” he said, “but you must have left it open a crack.”
“No I didn’t,” I said. “Gram White left a working on it.”
“Oh I see!” Will said, and ran his hands through his woolly hair in the manner of Dakros. “I couldn’t understand it. Both bloody chicks got out. Nick and I were out here rounding them up when those two came marching up. And she said, ‘Come along, Nick, I need you,’ and he obviously couldn’t think of a reason not to go with them. Didn’t even argue, just went.”
We watched Gram, Nick and Janine turn the corner out of sight.
“Not much to be done,” Zinka said. “She is his mother, that’s the problem. So what do we do now? You’ve got a major working half finished in there. You can’t just leave it.”
“I’ll go,” I said, “if you can keep the road open.”
It was what I had been aching to do anyway. I could barely credit it when Will and Zinka both sternly shook their heads. “It was your working, Rupert,” Zinka said, and Will added, “You can’t start a working on the outside and then go inside, Rupe. You must remember Stan telling you that. It’s basic.”
“Magids have been lost that way,” Zinka said.
Will said, “But Rob says he’ll go. He was wanting to go back with Nick anyway. I was trying to tell him how dangerous it is to alter a working halfway through when those damn chicks got out.”
“It’s altered anyway!” I snapped, and flung inside the room.
And here was further trouble.
In the odd-shaped space left between the roadway of candles and my bed, Rob was half on his feet, supporting himself painfully on the bedside table with one hand. His other hand was pointing to the road itself. “I couldn’t stop them! I was too slow!” he said.
I followed his pointing finger. And I saw the two quack chicks scurrying between the only two lighted candles, off the carpet and on to the hillside beyond. I confess my first thought was, Good riddance! My second was to wonder anxiously what damage this would do to the working. Will and Zinka crowded into the room behind me, just in time to see the chicks scuttle down over the shadowy brow of the hill and disappear.
“Oh no!” said Will.
Zinka’s eyes scanned the dark landscape lying at such a queer angle to the rest of my room. I could see she was awed. But she said drily, “Our Mr White has done even better than he expected, hasn’t he? I don’t think you should fet
ch them back now. What do you want to do, Rupert?”
“We carry on regardless,” I said. “Maree’s out there waiting.”
“In that case,” Rob said, “I have to go, don’t I?”
Will and Zinka edged down beside the frilly chair by the bathroom. I shut the door of my room and we all looked at Rob. Zinka looked at him with frank lascivious admiration. You could see why. Even ill and pale, with his horse-coat dull and staring, Rob was a magnificent sight.
He stood himself cautiously on all four hooves. “I do owe Maree,” he said. “She can’t manage alone. And you made me see… I see I’ve done a lot of damage and I ought to try to put it right.”
“He is mage-trained,” Will said.
“But you’re ill!” I objected. Besides, I still wanted to go myself.
“I can manage,” Rob said. His beautiful features twisted a little. “If it hurts, it probably serves me right, doesn’t it?”
“I think you’ll have to send him,” Zinka said decisively. “It fits.”
After that, I couldn’t argue any more. The two candles burning on the edge of the dark landscape were each nearly a third gone. We had wasted enough time. “What does he need to take?” I asked Zinka.
“Water’s easy,” she said. “I see you’ve got four little empty bottles. Now, for wool…”
“I’ve got a cashmere sweater,” I offered.
“Then you’d better get it unravelled,” Zinka said.
“What?” I said.
“The feel of the verse is for raw wool,” she explained. “In a hank. You know.”
Will stood in the bathroom doorway with a fistful of little bottles, laughing at the look on my face. “Not to worry,” he said. He fished in the pocket of his coat and came up with a big handful of fluffy white goat’s hair. “This do?” he asked Zinka.
“Perfect,” she said.
The last of our hasty preparations had to be done with the door of my room open, mostly in the passage outside. Rob, being so much longer than a human, could not fit into the space in front of the road when the door was closed. He was forced to hop, wincing at the jolt, across the first pair of candles, then out through the doorway and on into the corridor, where he turned himself to face into my room. There Zinka handed him a candle and Will’s belt pouch, with the four little bottles of water chinking in it despite being packed round with the goat’s wool.
“There you go,” she said, lovingly fastening the belt around Rob’s muscular waist-parts, while I stood waiting impatiently with my lighter and the plastic bags of grain and salt. “There. Do try to come back, Rob. You’re too stunning to lose.”
Rob had been looking ahead, very tense and determined, but at this, he flung back his sheet of black hair and turned his face down to Zinka’s. “You think so?” he said. His whole pose turned amorous. So did Zinka’s.
I more or less ground my teeth, but before I could say anything I heard the thud of sprinting feet on the carpet. I whirled round. Nick came flying up to us and caught hold of me to stop himself. “Oh good,” he said. “Rob’s going too.”
We stared at him. “I thought your mother—?” Zinka said.
“I told her I was going to bed,” Nick said. “That’s all she wanted me for anyway. OK, Rob. Let’s get going, shall we?”
Will and I looked at one another and grinned, remembering how deftly Nick had avoided Janine before. “Hold out your hand,” I said, advancing on Nick with my grain and salt.
“Both hands,” Zinka corrected me, and thrust a candle into Nick’s other hand.
I had filled Nick’s hand with mingled salt and grain and was just about to tip grain into Rob’s outstretched hand when I thought I heard footsteps again. Again I whirled round. Gram White was coming round the corner, from the same direction as Nick. Almost certainly he had been following Nick. I saw him in the mirrors first, reaching into his armpit under his robe in a way that could only mean he was fetching out a gun.
Things seemed to go into slow motion. I had time to realise that, if I could see him, then Gram White would have a distant view of us too, including Rob, and that Rob would be the one he shot first. I had plenty of time to plant the plastic bags on the floor. I had what felt like half an hour’s leisure to build a thick shield across the corridor, and then to check the other way, in case Janine was coming from the other end. But White was on his own.
He came round the corner and fired. He aimed, I think, at Rob’s head. The boom and the crack of the rebound shook floor, walls, air, everything. At least I got something right! I thought. I watched a rather large slice of the ceiling slowly unhitch and crash down on the carpet.
“Quick work,” Will said shakily.
Before White could fire again, Zinka trod the fallen plaster to flakes as she marched down the passage. “Gram White!” she said. Her voice rang as loudly as the shot. Instead of getting smaller as she marched away from us, her rosy figure actually seemed to grow bigger. White backed away as she advanced on him. “Gram White!” she said. “You do anything like that again and I’ll make you sorry you were ever born!”
She was magnificent, but we didn’t, even Rob, dare wait and watch. I hurriedly filled Rob’s hand with grain and salt and stowed the remainder in the belt bag, along with a candle for Maree and my spare lighter. Will meanwhile lit Nick’s candle and then Rob’s. Then we both bolted into my room to the far end and began relighting the double row of candles and saying the rhyme. Since Nick and Rob could see the road, they started forward at once. I remember looking up between the third and fourth pair of candles and seeing them go past, both in profile and surprisingly alike, not only in the actual classic shape of their faces, but also in their expressions. Both looked thoroughly determined, and with both you wondered how long that would last. Rob’s resolution might survive pain, but not if something offered him an easy way out. Nick would probably scorn an easy way out, but I knew I would not trust him if he were asked to sacrifice something he wanted. And I had a strong feeling that both the easy way and the sacrifice were waiting out there on that hard-to-see grey road.
We had reached the end of Will’s verse when, to my relief, Zinka came back, expressively dusting her hands, in time to say her own verse. She shut the door and leant against it while we all recited the last one. By that time, Nick and Rob were visible down below, as two dark shapes and two pricks of light, crossing the level towards the next hill. Making good time. We watched them wind up that hill, and went on watching until it was clear that the pinpricks of light did not carry far enough for us to see them on the next rise. It was all dark out there.
“Right,” said Zinka. “I got rid of White for the moment, but I’ll tell you what I’ll do. There’s a party somewhere on this floor. I wasn’t going to go, because Thurless invited me there, but I think I will go now. I’ll make sure to be there at least until dawn, and I’ll be listening. If White comes back, or anything else happens, one of you two just call me or phone Room 509. OK?”
“Before you do,” I said, “would you mind terribly checking Nick’s room for us? It worries me that his mother wanted him there.”
“Good thought,” said Zinka.
She went off to do that. I said to Will, “I’m going to risk putting out all the candles but the last two again, and then relighting the next pair as soon as the end pair begin to gutter. That way they’ll last nine times as long.”
Will rubbed his face, thinking about it. “The only trouble with that – now we know the road stays there as long as there are two candles burning – the trouble is that someone’s going to have to sit and watch them and relight the next lot.”
“I was going to sit and watch anyway,” I said.
“In that case,” said Will, “would you mind if I got some sleep? I was up near dawn milking the goats.”
“Go ahead,” I said.
So Will climbed under my slightly bloodstained duvet, uttering a great weary yawn. He was asleep almost at once. He never even stirred when Zinka came back.
r /> “You were right,” she told me. “And here was I thinking you were being paranoid. I take it back. There was a really strong slave spell in there. I mean strong – about ten times the strength of whatever you did to that lift. Even a selfish kid like that Nick would find himself doing anything they wanted after five minutes in there with that thing. I scotched it, but I made it look as if it was still there. Is that what you wanted?”
“Yes,” I said. “Thanks, Zinka. Unless… has he got a computer?”
“Nice little laptop,” she said. “But I don’t know about computers.”
“I’ll take a look at it tomorrow,” I said wearily. After what had been done to Maree’s computer, there was almost certainly something wrong with Nick’s too. The list of things I had to do tomorrow seemed to stretch out like a supermarket bill.
After Zinka had gone, I moved the frilly chair round with its back to the door and folded the wheelchair up. It had occurred to me that the wheelchair, though more comfortable, could get shunted forward between the lines of candles if someone like Zinka, to whom locks mean nothing, came in suddenly behind me. I could then be willy-nilly in the midst of a working I should be outside of. Will and Zinka had been right about the dangers of that. If it hadn’t been Maree out there, I would never have dreamt of suggesting it.
I turned out the lights and sat in the frilly chair. With only the two candles alight, down to a small, small glimmer, the landscape out there was slightly easier to see. It was as if someone had drawn on black paper with the faintest of faint grey luminous airspray a rolling moor-like distance and a faint road looping across it. Far, far off, there may have been the loom of something else beyond the horizon. But I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t go there. There was no point trying to speculate on what was happening to the three people journeying out there. All I could do was hold the road and watch the candles.