The Mammoth Book of Dark Magic

by Mike Ashley

  Alas for his hopes. The fat woman who opened the door laughed rudely in Thasper’s face. “Don’t bother me, son! Go and ask an invisible dragon!” And she slammed the door again.

  Thasper stood in the street, keenly humiliated. And not even a hint of where to look next. Awful suspicions rose in his mind: he was making a fool of himself; he had set himself a wild goose chase; the Sage did not exist. In order not to think of these things, he gave way to anger. “All right!” he shouted at the shut door. “I will ask an invisible dragon! So there!” And, carried by his anger, he ran down to the river and out across the nearest bridge.

  He stopped in the middle of the bridge, leaning on the parapet, and knew he was making an utter fool of himself. There were no such things as invisible dragons. He was sure of that. But he was still in the grip of his obsession, and this was something he had set himself to do now. Even so, if there had been anyone about near the bridge, Thasper would have gone away. But it was deserted. Feeling an utter fool, he made the prayer-sign to Ock, Ruler of Oceans – for Ock was the god in charge of all things to do with water – but he made the sign secretly, down under the parapet, so there was no chance of anyone seeing. Then he said, almost in a whisper, “Is there an invisible dragon here? I’ve got something to ask you.”

  Drops of water whirled over him. Something wetly fanned his face. He heard the something whirring. He turned his face that way and saw three blots of wet in a line along the parapet, each about two feet apart and each the size of two of his hands spread out together. Odder still, water was dripping out of nowhere all along the parapet, for a distance about twice as long as Thasper was tall.

  Thasper laughed uneasily. “I’m imagining a dragon,” he said. “If there was a dragon, those splotches would be the places where its body rests. Water dragons have no feet. And the length of the wetness suggests I must be imagining it about eleven feet long.”

  “I am fourteen feet long,” said a voice out of nowhere. It was rather too near Thasper’s face for comfort and blew fog at him. He drew back. “Make haste, child-of-a-god,” said the voice. “What did you want to ask me?”

  “I-I-I—” stammered Thasper. It was not just that he was scared. This was a body-blow. It messed up utterly his notions about gods needing men to believe in them. But he pulled himself together. His voice only cracked a little as he said, “I’m looking for the Sage of Dissolution. Do you know where he is?”

  The dragon laughed. It was a peculiar noise, like one of those water-warblers people make bird noises with. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you precisely where the Sage is,” the voice out of nowhere said. “You have to find him for yourself. Think about it, child-of-a-god. You must have noticed there’s a pattern.”

  “Too right, there’s a pattern!” Thasper said. “Everywhere he goes, I just miss him, and then the place catches fire!”

  “That too,” said the dragon. “But there’s a pattern to his lodgings too. Look for it. That’s all I can tell you, child-of-a-god. Any other questions?”

  “No – for a wonder,” Thasper said. “Thanks very much.”

  “You’re welcome,” said the invisible dragon. “People are always telling one another to ask us, and hardly anyone does. I’ll see you again.” Watery air whirled in Thasper’s face. He leaned over the parapet and saw one prolonged clean splash in the river, and silver bubbles coming up. Then nothing. He was surprised to find his legs were shaking.

  He steadied his knees and tramped home. He went to his room and, before he did anything else, he acted on a superstitious impulse he had not thought he had in him, and took down the household god Alina insisted he keep in a niche over his bed. He put it carefully outside in the passage. Then he got out a map of the town and some red stickers and plotted out all the places where he had just missed the Sage.

  The result had him dancing with excitement. The dragon was right. There was a pattern. The Sage had started in good lodgings at the better end of town. Then he had gradually moved to poorer places, but he had moved in a curve, down to the station and back towards the better part again. Now, the Alums’ house was just on the edge of the poorer part. The Sage was coming this way! New Unicorn Street had not been so far away. The next place should be nearer still. Thasper had only to look for a house on fire.

  It was getting dark by then. Thasper threw his curtains back and leaned out of his window to look at the poorer streets. And there it was! There was a red and orange flicker to the left – in Harvest Moon Street, by the look of it. Thasper laughed aloud. He was actually grateful to the assassins!

  He raced downstairs and out of the house. The anxious questions of parents and the yells of brothers and sisters followed him, but he slammed the door on them. Two minutes’ running brought him to the scene of the fire. The street was a mad flicker of dark figures. People were piling furniture in the road. Some more people were helping a dazed woman in a crooked brown turban into a singed armchair.

  “Didn’t you have a lodger as well?” someone asked her anxiously.

  The woman kept trying to straighten her turban. It was all she could really think of. “He didn’t stay,” she said. “I think he may be down at the Half Moon now.”

  Thasper waited for no more. He went pelting down the street.

  The Half Moon was an inn on the corner of the same road. Most of the people who usually drank there must have been up the street, helping rescue furniture, but there was a dim light inside, enough to show a white notice in the window. ROOMS, it said.

  Thasper burst inside. The barman was on a stool by the window craning to watch the house burn. He did not look at Thasper. “Where’s your lodger?” gasped Thasper. “I’ve got a message. Urgent.”

  The barman did not turn round. “Upstairs, first on the left,” he said. “The roof’s caught. They’ll have to act quick to save the house on either side.”

  Thasper heard him say this as he bounded upstairs. He turned left. He gave the briefest of knocks on the door there, flung it open and rushed in.

  The room was empty. The light was on and it showed a stark bed, a stained table with an empty mug and some sheets of paper on it, and a fireplace with a mirror over it. Beside the fireplace, another door was just swinging shut. Obviously somebody had just that moment gone through it.

  Thasper bounded towards that door. But he was checked, for just a second, by seeing himself in the mirror over the fireplace. He had not meant to pause. But some trick of the mirror, which was old and brown and speckled, made his reflection look for a moment a great deal older. He looked easily over twenty. He looked—

  He remembered the Letter from the Unknown. This was the time. He knew it was. He was about to meet the Sage. He had only to call him. Thasper went towards the still gently swinging door. He hesitated. The Letter had said call at once. Knowing the Sage was just beyond the door, Thasper pushed it open a fraction and held it so with his fingers. He was full of doubts. He thought, Do I really believe the gods need people? Am I so sure? What shall I say to the Sage after all? He let the door slip shut again.

  “Chrestomanci,” he said, miserably.

  There was a whoosh of displaced air behind him. It buffeted Thasper half around. He stared. A tall man was standing by the stark bed. He was a most extraordinary figure in a long black robe, with what seemed to be yellow comets embroidered on it. The inside of the robe, swirling in the air, showed yellow, with black comets on it. The tall man had a very smooth dark head, very bright dark eyes and, on his feet, what seemed to be red bedroom slippers.

  “Thank goodness,” said this outlandish person. “For a moment, I was afraid you would go through that door.”

  The voice brought memory back to Thasper. “You brought me home through a picture when I was little,” he said. “Are you Chrestomanci?”

  “Yes,” said the tall outlandish man. “And you are Thasper. And now we must both leave before this building catches fire.”

  He took hold of Thasper’s arm and towed him to the door which led
to the stairs. As soon as he pushed the door open, thick smoke rolled in, filled with harsh crackling. It was clear that the inn was on fire already. Chrestomanci clapped the door shut again. The smoke set both of them coughing, Chrestomanci so violently that Thasper was afraid he would choke. He pulled both of them back into the middle of the room. By now, smoke was twining up between the bare boards of the floor, causing Chrestomanci to cough again.

  “This would happen just as I had gone to bed with flu,” he said, when he could speak. “Such is life. These orderly gods of yours leave us no choice.” He crossed the smoking floor and pushed open the door by the fireplace.

  It opened on to blank space. Thasper gave a yelp of horror.

  “Precisely,” coughed Chrestomanci. “You were intended to crash to your death.”

  “Can’t we jump to the ground?” Thasper suggested.

  Chrestomanci shook his smooth head. “Not after they’ve done this to it. No. We’ll have to carry the fight to them and go and visit the gods instead. Will you be kind enough to lend me your turban before we go?” Thasper stared at this odd request. “I would like to use it as a belt,” Chrestomanci croaked. “The way to Heaven may be a little cold, and I only have pyjamas under my dressing-gown.”

  The striped undergarments Chrestomanci was wearing did look a little thin. Thasper slowly unwound his turban. To go before gods bareheaded was probably no worse than going in nightclothes, he supposed. Besides, he did not believe there were any gods. He handed the turban over. Chrestomanci tied the length of pale blue cloth around his black and yellow gown and seemed to feel more comfortable.

  “Now hang on to me,” he said, “and you’ll be all right.” He took Thasper’s arm again and walked up into the sky, dragging Thasper with him.

  For a while, Thasper was too stunned to speak. He could only marvel at the way they were treading up the sky as if there were invisible stairs in it. Chrestomanci was doing it in the most matter of fact way, coughing from time to time and shivering a little, but keeping very tight hold of Thasper nevertheless. In no time, the town was a clutter of prettily lit dolls’ houses below, with two red blots where two of them were burning. The stars were unwinding about them, above and below, as if they had already climbed above some of them.

  “It’s a long climb to Heaven,” Chrestomanci observed. “Is there anything you’d like to know on the way?”

  “Yes,” said Thasper. “Did you say the gods are trying to kill me?”

  “They are trying to eliminate the Sage of Dissolution,” said Chrestomanci, “which they may not realise is the same thing. You see, you are the Sage.”

  “But I’m not!” Thasper insisted. “The Sage is a lot older than me, and he asks questions I never even thought of until I heard of him.”

  “Ah yes,” said Chrestomanci. “I’m afraid there is an awful circularity to this. It’s the fault of whoever tried to put you away as a small child. As far as I can work out, you stayed three years old for seven years – until you were making such a disturbance in our world that we had to find you and let you out. But in this world of Theare, highly organised and fixed as it is, the prophecy stated that you would begin preaching Dissolution at the age of twenty-three, or at least in this very year. Therefore the preaching had to begin this year. You did not need to appear. Did you ever speak to anyone who had actually heard the Sage preach?”

  “No,” said Thasper. “Come to think of it.”

  “Nobody did,” said Chrestomanci. “You started in a small way anyway. First you wrote a book, which no one paid much heed to—”

  “No, that’s wrong,” objected Thasper. “He – I – er, the Sage was writing a book after preaching.”

  “But don’t you see,” said Chrestomanci, “because you were back in Theare by then, the facts had to try to catch you up. They did this by running backwards, until it was possible for you to arrive where you were supposed to be. Which was in that room in the inn there, at the start of your career. I suppose you are just old enough to start by now. And I suspect our celestial friends up here tumbled to this belatedly and tried to finish you off. It wouldn’t have done them any good, as I shall shortly tell them.” He began coughing again. They had climbed to where it was bitterly cold.

  By this time, the world was a dark arch below them. Thasper could see the blush of the sun, beginning to show underneath the world. They climbed on. The light grew. The sun appeared, a huge brightness in the distance underneath. A dim memory came again to Thasper. He struggled to believe that none of this was true, and he did not succeed.

  “How do you know all this?” he asked bluntly.

  “Have you heard of a god called Ock?” Chrestomanci coughed. “He came to talk to me when you should have been the age you are now. He was worried —” He coughed again. “I shall have to save the rest of my breath for Heaven.”

  They climbed on, and the stars swam around them, until the stuff they were climbing changed and became solider. Soon they were climbing a dark ramp, which flushed pearly as they went upwards. Here, Chrestomanci let go of Thasper’s arm and blew his nose on a gold-edged handkerchief with an air of relief. The pearl of the ramp grew to silver and the silver to dazzling white. At length, they were walking on level whiteness, through hall after hall.

  The gods were gathered to meet them. None of them looked cordial.

  “I fear we are not properly dressed,” Chrestomanci murmured.

  Thasper looked at the gods, and then at Chrestomanci, and squirmed with embarrassment. Fanciful and queer as Chrestomanci’s garb was, it was still most obviously nightwear. The things on his feet were fur bedroom slippers. And there, looking like a piece of blue string around Chrestomanci’s waist, was the turban Thasper should have been wearing.

  The gods were magnificent, in golden trousers and jewelled turbans, and got more so as they approached the greater gods. Thasper’s eye was caught by a god in shining cloth of gold, who surprised him by beaming a friendly, almost anxious look at him. Opposite him was a huge liquid-looking figure draped in pearls and diamonds. This god swiftly, but quite definitely, winked. Thasper was too awed to react, but Chrestomanci calmly winked back.

  At the end of the halls, upon a massive throne, towered the mighty figure of Great Zond, clothed in white and purple, with a crown on his head. Chrestomanci looked up at Zond and thoughtfully blew his nose. It was hardly respectful.

  “For what reason do two mortals trespass in our halls?” Zond thundered coldly.

  Chrestomanci sneezed. “Because of your own folly,” he said. “You gods of Theare have had everything so well worked out for so long that you can’t see beyond your own routine.”

  “I shall blast you for that,” Zond announced.

  “Not if any of you wish to survive,” Chrestomanci said.

  There was a long murmur of protest from the other gods. They wished to survive. They were trying to work out what Chrestomanci meant. Zond saw it as a threat to his authority and thought he had better be cautious. “Proceed,” he said.

  “One of your most efficient features,” Chrestomanci said, “is that your prophecies always come true. So why, when a prophecy is unpleasant to you, do you think you can alter it? That, my good gods, is rank folly. Besides, no one can halt his own Dissolution, least of all you gods of Theare. But you forgot. You forgot you had deprived both yourselves and mankind of any kind of free will, by organising yourselves so precisely. You pushed Thasper, the Sage of Dissolution, into my world, forgetting that there is still chance in my world. By chance, Thasper was discovered after only seven years. Lucky for Theare that he was. I shudder to think what might have happened if Thasper had remained three years old for all his allotted lifetime.”

  “That was my fault!” cried Imperion. “I take the blame.” He turned to Thasper. “Forgive me,” he said. “You are my own son.”

  Was this, Thasper wondered, what Alina meant by the gods blessing her womb? He had not thought it was more than a figure of speech. He looked at Imperion, blin
king a little in the god’s dazzle. He was not wholly impressed. A fine god, and an honest one, but Thasper could see he had a limited outlook. “Of course I forgive you,” he said politely.

  “It is also lucky,” Chrestomanci said, “that none of you succeeded in killing the Sage. Thasper is a god’s son. That means there can only ever be one of him, and because of your prophecy he has to be alive to preach Dissolution. You could have destroyed Theare. As it is, you have caused it to blur into a mass of cracks. Theare is too well organised to divide into two alternative worlds, like my world would. Instead, events have had to happen which could not have happened. Theare has cracked and warped, and you have all but brought about your own Dissolution.”

  “What can we do?” Zond said, aghast.

  “There’s only one thing you can do,” Chrestomanci told him. “Let Thasper be. Let him preach Dissolution and stop trying to blow him up. That will bring about free will and a free future. Then either Theare will heal, or it will split, cleanly and painlessly, into two healthy worlds.”

  “So we bring about our own downfall?” Zond asked mournfully.

  “It was always inevitable,” said Chrestomanci.

  Zond sighed. “Very well. Thasper, son of Imperion, I reluctantly give you my blessing to go forth and preach Dissolution. Go in peace.”

  Thasper bowed. Then he stood there silent a long time. He did not notice Imperion and Ock both trying to attract his attention. The newspaper report had talked of the Sage as full of anguish and self-doubt. Now he knew why. He looked at Chrestomanci, who was blowing his nose again.

  “How can I preach Dissolution?” he said. “How can I not believe in the gods when I have seen them for myself?”

  “That’s a question you certainly should be asking,” Chrestomanci croaked. “Go down to Theare and ask it.” Thasper nodded and turned to go. Chrestomanci leaned towards him and said, from behind his handkerchief. “Ask yourself this too: Can the gods catch flu? I think I may have given it to all of them. Find out and let me know, there’s a good chap.”