“Could I go to bed now?” Nick said. “I’m so tired.”
“Of course,” we said, and we bundled him over to my bed. I swear he was asleep before we got him there. He was a big lad and very heavy. It was difficult to get him on to the bed, even with two of us, and he lay like a log once we got him there.
“What do you make of that?” Will murmured.
“Typical Maree,” I said. “Not typical Nick, though. I didn’t know he had it in him.”
“Just what I thought,” Will said. “You’d think with a mother like his – well…” He saw me vainly staring out into the increasingly nebulous landscape. Daylight was strengthening all the time. I hoped that accounted for the grey pallor out there, but I very much feared that the road was now fading. “She’ll be along,” Will said. “He asked right and he didn’t look behind, even though he heard her. “He heard her, Rupe. And it was clever of him not to look. I shouldn’t wonder if you’re right and Si or someone hasn’t got another verse about that, or some Magid we don’t know. And it’s a long way and she’s small. Short legs. She’ll turn up. Why don’t you go and find us both more coffee? I’ll stay and keep the candles going. I’ve got really good at keeping them down to just a spark.”
Bless Will. A fine piece of bluster that was. He could see I could hardly bear to be in the room just then. I was sure Nick had been lying. I could see Will thought so too. Lying not about what Maree had asked for – that rang true – but about what he himself had asked for. I couldn’t see Nick sacrificing something he really wanted, not even for Maree, not in a month of Sundays. I tried to smile at Will as I made for the door, but it felt more like bared teeth. I said, almost normally, “Coffee. Yes. And while I’m down there, I’d better put Stan in the picture and talk to Dakros. I’ll be about half an hour. All right?”
Then I broke and ran. I ran until I got to the stairs. A lift was too confining. I went down the stairs slowly, a pause from step to step, Rob gone, Maree missing, each step those words. My head pounded. My mouth felt vile. Coffee was essential. Rob gone, Maree missing, down and down. Otherwise I didn’t think much, except to be surprised when I got to the part of the stairs where the party had been, to find so little trace of it: just a litter of tinsel, a cigarette end or so and a smell of body and stale drink that reminded me of the inside of my head. Rob gone, Maree missing…
I decided I needed fresh air at once. Even before coffee.
I pushed through the fire door, which thumped out Rob gone, Maree missing, into a smell of polish and the muted sound of the place being cleaned. Business as usual. Hotels are marvellous places. The end of the world is coming and breakfast is served from eight to ten. I could smell toast distantly and it made me want to gag. The only thing to do was to cut out through the foyer, avoiding all smell of food, and go round to the car park from there. Instead of turning towards the dining room, I hurried down the steps towards the big glass doors.
Gram White, robed and carrying a staff, was waiting for me in the middle of the foyer.
It was another of those occasions when time stretched. I know my first thought was an ignoble inner cry of Oh, not before breakfast! which told me, even as I made it, that I had been caught in a summoning from the moment I decided on fresh air. R. Venables does it again! I also had time to look round the calm, palm-decorated space of the foyer and to notice, in the overhead mirrors, that besides the robed and foreshortened figure of White in the centre I could see the foreign receptionist, Odile, at work behind the desk. On Sunday! They exploited her. But that told me that whatever White intended, it was something quick and hard for the uninitiated to see. Something he was well in practice with. That told me what.
I don’t think I paused. I went down those stairs and towards him in a rush.
That threw him. He tried to open the gate as I came, but I was now going so fast that he was too late. I caught his gate as it spread and dragged upon its edges with both hands. He yelled with contemptuous fury and tried to force it open again. Fire thundered up between us, smoking the overhead mirrors black. I had been right. He had opened it into the heart of a volcano again. We hung there together for endless seconds, burning and equally balanced.
Meanwhile the node went mad around us.
As I fought the triple fight, trying to get that opening elsewhere closed, trying not to fry, trying to get the upper hand of White, I had sideways helter-skelter sights of the foyer whirling round us like a merry-go-round, potted palms, glass doors, the desk with Odile crouching behind it too scared even to scream, going around and around in a crazy vortex. But mostly I was simply conscious of White and his heavy pale eyes and his pouchy, bearded face, working away in front of me with flourishes of his staff, full of hate and contempt. He hated the whole Magid kind, that was clear. But it was also clear he hated me, personally, with particularity, not just for getting in his way, but physically too, for being myself. And I hated him the same way. I felt pure contempt for his melodramatic hands-off magic with the staff and the stupid robe.
I was also angry, angrier than I have ever been in my life. This pernicious man, with his mad ambitions, had probably destroyed Maree. He had tried to shoot a centaur who was his own child. He had killed three unoffending children and tried to kill Rob. I wanted to destroy him. I wished, with frustration enough to scream at it, that a Magid was allowed to destroy. And he had no such prohibitions. He drew back in the whirling foyer and lashed through me with his staff a blast of noxiousness. It was intended to give me cancer. I rinsed it aside. As I did so, I recognised it as another thing he had done not long ago. And I thought, You did this to Derek Mallory too, didn’t you? And my anger was like sheets of flame.
I thundered a whip-crack of pain at him, truly savage pain – at least that was allowed – and when he yelped, winced and staggered, I followed it up with extreme stasis.
Everything stopped, slightly skewed from where it had been, with Gram White frozen and leaning to one side in the centre. I should have done this straight away, I thought. My stasis had stilled the node, but the gate was still open as a writhing smoky slit. I closed it, and sealed it firmly. I cleansed the overhead glass. I restored the melted marble paving by my feet. One of the potted palms had fallen over. I put it upright. Then I turned to Odile, who had been caught in the stasis too. I released her and she stirred and looked at me as if she was sure I was mad.
“Bear with me,” I said. “I have to lay a geas on this man. Then it will be over.”
“You must take your complaint to the Manager,” she replied.
I gave up on her. “In due course,” I said. The trouble with a geas is that it has to be laid aloud, in the hearing of the recipient. Gram White was not likely to stand around for me to do it any other time or place, except here, right in front of Odile. Ah well. Wondering what Odile was going to make of this, I retreated to the steps as a vantage point and broke the stasis on White sufficiently for him to be able to stand upright and listen to what I said. I said:
“Gram White, I hereby lay geas upon you, that you may not now or ever use magic of any kind on any being or thing, alive or dead, inanimate, disembodied or between states. From now onwards, the use and practice of magic will be as far from you as the sun is from this world, and any approach to it will be your instant death. Furthermore, if you invoke or use the magic or other powers of your goddess of the bush, or of any other deity, the geas will be your instant death. And by reason of your abuse of the powers you have had at your disposal, this geas is now laid upon you, to abide by, on pain of instant death.”
Having said this, I released the stasis completely. White looked up at me in total hatred. “You do think you’re clever, don’t you?” he said, and turned and went out through the glass doors.
Someone behind me said laughingly, “That sounded very impressive!”
The landing above the stairs seemed to be full of people, probably all on their way to breakfast. There was Wendy, raising fat hands in silent clapping motions, Kornelius with
her, grinning feverishly at what he had overheard; and Tansy-Ann Fisk, looking compassionately at me. She was no doubt forgiving me for being in the grip of a grey psychic blanket. Behind her was a scared-looking Tina Gianetti and her besuited boyfriend, who obviously thought it was all just some more nonsense, and beyond these were Rick Corrie and Maxim Hough, both of whom had the air of hoping that what I had just said was not going to cause trouble for the committee. There were also numerous other people I didn’t know by name. One of these asked me, “Are we talking Magicians’ Battle here? Are you going to do it for the Swords and Sorcery tonight?”
“That was the idea,” I said weakly, “but I’m not sure Gram White wants to cooperate.”
At this they all gave various cries of encouragement and enthusiasm and went on along the upper level towards the dining room, leaving me face-to-face with Ted Mallory, who must have been at the back of the crowd.
“I see you’ve made the acquaintance of my esteemed brother-in-law,” Mallory said. “Nasty bit of work, isn’t he?” I nodded. He said judiciously, “But I very much liked what you just said to him. You wouldn’t think of letting me have a copy of it, would you? It would fit in perfectly with the thing I’m writing at the moment.”
I thought of Maree, and the wobbly windows. I felt I owed it to Maree to say, “What I just said was a very powerful geas – but you don’t believe that, do you?”
He gave a great jovial laugh. “My dear fellow! I’m a rational man! I may write some pretty strange stuff, but it stops there, you know, stops there.”
“A geas,” I said, “is a magical prohibition.”
Mallory looked at me expectantly for a second. “I know that,” he said. “I know my trade. Well, if you won’t give me a copy, I dare say I can do it from memory.”
I gave up on him and watched him stroll away to breakfast. He was worse than Odile.
After that, I simply could not face going that way myself. I found the staff door behind one of the mirrors and went off by back corridors to the staff car park. I felt awful. By the time I reached my poor battered car, I was shaking all over and could hardly get the door open.
Inside, the gentle tinkle of Scarlatti faded out. Stan said, “What’s up now, lad?”
“Reaction,” I said. “I think.” I flopped into the driver’s seat and told him.
“Oh dear,” he said. “Oh dear. It doesn’t get any better, does it? I’m sorry about that girl. And that centaur lad. But on the bright side, if the Upper Room do Intend this Gram White for the next Koryfonic Emperor, at least you stopped him from being an Emperor Mage. They’re always bad news. Though he sounds as if he’d be bad enough as just plain Joe Emperor, this one. Talking of which, your phone keeps going. I think Dakros wants you.”
“I’m sure he does,” I said. “I’d better get it over with.” I got through to Dakros, still without the least idea what I was going to say to him. “Venables here,” I said.
“Ah. Magid,” he said. “I was just going to call you again. Half a second while I secure my cubby.” He was evidently aboard one of the troop carriers. I could tell by the machinery noise and the distant military voices in the background. These were abruptly cut off. “There,” he said. “Are you secure for serious stuff your end?”
“Yes,” I said. “Look—”
“Good,” he said. “Now, listen to me, Magid. We finally found that young centaur. Nice naïve fifteen-year-old, name of Kristefos, scared witless and hiding in a stack of vine props. Alexandra, Jeffros and I have had a long talk with him.”
“I am extremely relieved to hear that,” I said. “Is he wounded?”
“No,” said Dakros, “and you might well be relieved, Magid. If it wasn’t for that centaur’s evidence, I’d have no means of knowing you weren’t up there in that colony entirely on your own.”
“What?” I said. “Now look here…!”
“As it is,” Dakros pursued, “I have Kristefos to say that the Lesser Consort Jaleila – whom we all thought was dead – and Gramas Albek were up there too, and the evidence of a hover crew that these two were pursuing Kristefos in an Earth vehicle. At least, we’re fairly clear from the timing that it was those two and not the pair I found you with in the lane. So the most I’m going to accuse you of, Magid, is of holding out on me.”
“Now look—” I tried again.
“Holding out on me,” repeated Dakros. “Concealing evidence, if you like. Now I respect Magids and Magid laws, and I do know there is precious little a Magid can do if a thing is Intended. But I have an empire to settle, Magid, and I don’t care if a thing is Intended or not.”
“I don’t follow you,” I said hopelessly.
“You will,” Dakros told me, “when I tell you that Jeffros, who is no one’s fool, spent nearly an hour yesterday with those youngsters who came with you—”
“They didn’t come with me!” I managed to protest. “I didn’t know they were there. They were fetched by Knarros – at least Maree was—”
“Ah,” said Dakros. “You didn’t say that yesterday, Magid. You let me believe they were with you. And the other thing I have to tell you is that those two girls left alive up there – well, forget them. Blood tests and so forth show they can’t possibly be related to the Emperor and Kristefos claims they were simply servants for the little girl.”
“I’d sort of expected that,” I muttered.
“Sure you had,” agreed Dakros, “because you knew, and I didn’t, that when I was standing in that hedge talking to you, the youngster I was looking down on was Nichothodes, our next Emperor.”
Now the fat was in the fire. “I didn’t know. I only suspected,” I said.
“And made sure I didn’t,” Dakros replied. “Well, Magid, I’ve had enough of this. I want two things of you, and I want them today. First I want Nichothodes, handed over, in one piece, ready for coronation. Second, I want Gramos and Jaleila Albek handed over, also in one piece, ready for justice. I give you until dinnertime, Magid. By dinnertime today, you give me these three people, regardless of what’s Intended or what isn’t, or I take serious action. Is that understood, Magid?”
“Yes,” I said limply. He rang off. I sat staring at the phone, thinking that I supposed I should be grateful that Dakros was not accusing me of murder. He had obviously thought about it. Finally, I said, “Stan, when the hell do they eat dinner in the Empire?”
“Eh?” said Stan. “Well, has to be after six or they’d call it tea or something instead.”
“Six,” I said. “Six. That gives me about ten hours to think of something. Thanks, Stan. See you.”
I got out of the car and locked it like a sleep-walker. I simply couldn’t think what to do. Or, let’s be honest, what to do about Nick. Janine and White I would cheerfully hand over. It was just a matter of thinking how. But Nick. It was no use pretending Nick was my favourite person since he had left Maree in Babylon. As Emperor he would be nothing like as badly placed as those poor dead children. They would have been snatched out of next to nothing into almost everything, where Nick would come from the complex culture of Earth and merely have to adapt to a life of high ceremony. Teenage boys do adapt, though I couldn’t exactly see him enjoying it. In fact, the way I felt at the moment, I almost felt that would serve him right.
Except, did it serve even the most selfish boy right to be pitched into the situation that had made Dakros lose his hair and Jeffros still look like walking wounded?
The question was, really, was Nick Intended to be the next Koryfonic Emperor? Normally, if a thing is Intended, you have a very strong sense of it, and you know equally strongly if it isn’t. At that moment, I simply could not tell. I felt a total, weary blank.
Oh damn it! I thought, getting into the lift. Maree valued Nick. You only had to see the way she looked after him at breakfast, when the kid couldn’t get his eyes open, to see how much she valued him. I dwelt on that. Maree and Nick may not have known they were brother and sister, but they were friends, all the same. Maree wo
uld certainly not want Nick condemned to the inevitable early death when the Empire fell to pieces in his hands. There was my decision, then. No matter what was Intended, or what was not, I was going to respect Maree’s wishes. A pity that I had no idea how, I thought, as the lift door opened on Floor Five.
Here I realised where I was. Well, no point in going back down again. I could get coffee from Room Service. My recent fracas inside the node seemed to have put everything back more or less where it had been on Thursday. Room 555 was now only a short way down the corridor. I went there.
The door opened on a rich smell of coffee. The eighth pair of candles was now alight. In the skewed distance they led to, the landscape was grey and cloudy, but still nebulously there. Will and Zinka were on the floor by the bathroom, just beginning on a hearty breakfast.
Zinka plays room service like an artist,” Will announced through a mouthful of croissant. “She’s got us things that aren’t on the menu.”
“I got the pancakes and bacon for you,” Zinka said to me. “Sit down and eat and tell. Someone messed with the node again. Is that all? Tell us.”
I sat and ate and drank ravenously and told them. In the course of it, my quacks woke up. Each took a glorious near-indigo head from under a wing, saw me, saw food, and spread their dark blue wings to glide to the carpet. Then, most circumspectly, they picked their way round the outside of the road by the door and arrived politely for their share of the croissant.
“Those birds are intelligent beings,” Zinka said respectfully. “They’ve been to Babylon. I don’t know what to advise about Nick, Rupert.” Here we all took one of many cautious looks towards the bed, but Nick slept on, on his back now, snoring faintly. “There’s no chance he’d make a success of the Empire, is there?” We all examined Nick again as he slept. Zinka and Will both shook their heads slightly. It seemed that they, at least, had sufficient precognition to know this was impossible. Zinka frowned as she plastered marmalade upon cinnamon toast. “I don’t know about you two,” she said, “but my sense is that Nick is actually supposed to be something quite different.”