by K. E. Mills
“There’s no point squealing, mate,” Monk told him a week later when he brought the eye-changing incant for testing. “Sir Alec’s the best in the business. He knows what he’s doing—and he’s right. I can name two unfriendly governments and four dubious companies who’d love to bottle what you’ve got. And that’s just off the top of my head. So you stay put here for as long as Sir Alec tells you. Let the boffins run all the tests they want, twice. You’ll be safe that way.”
And that had given him a horrible jolt.
Monk was afraid for him? Why? What did he know that Sir Alec wasn’t saying?
“There’s no need to panic, Gerald,” Monk had added, reading him with unerring accuracy, as usual. “There’s nothing in the wind. Sir Alec’s just… being careful. Don’t worry about it.”
So he hadn’t. Or at least, not very much. Instead he’d endured the ongoing poking and prodding and rehashing of what had happened in New Ottosland, and put all his leftover energy into his janitorial studies. And he must have done something right because here he was at the front gates of the haunted house, ready to prove without doubt that Gerald Dun-woody was up to the task of being one of Sir Alec’s junior janitors. Ready to start paying back the debt he owed his dead.
In which case, Dunnywood, it’s past time you got this show on the road.
He tugged off his gloves, shoved them in his pocket, then ran his fingers lightly over the hexed gates’ weathered wrought iron. That was better. He could read the incant properly now—and it was a right little sod, too, prickly as a thornbush. Intricately tangled. Deviously devised. Tasting of stinkweed, scented with deception.
Is this one of Monk’s hexes? I’ll bet it’s one of Monk’s. I’m sure I can catch a whiff of Monkishness in here…
But he wasn’t only sensing his friend’s familiar, anarchic thaumic signature. This incant felt like a joint operation. More than one wizard had helped to create it. So the Department’s best were ganging up on him, were they? He grinned.
You want to play, chaps? All right. Let’s play.
Except the game swiftly became deadly serious, because as far as thaumaturgic tests went this one was murder. The hex actually did test him, which was no mean feat. He was a rogue wizard, after all. Challenges like this were supposed to be easy.
At least he thought they were.
Oh, well. If it was easy they wouldn’t call it a test, would they?
Sweating, swearing, he dismantled the convoluted hex one brilliant, stubborn strand at a time. Monk and his mates had really pulled out all the stops, doubling and redoubling the bindings, slyly tricking him with feints and misdirections that left his fingers stinging and his hair standing on end. But in the end he was victorious. After nearly half an hour of squinting concentration the incant’s final binding snapped and he was rewarded by the gates slowly swinging wide on soundless hinges.
One fist pumped above his head in a restrained exhibition of triumph. “Ha! Yes! Choke on that, Mister Markham! You and your fancy Research and Development chums!”
Not that he was taking the hex personally, of course. Chances were that Monk didn’t even know who it was being designed for. Sir Alec was a master at keeping secrets, after all. But either way—whether Monk was in on the game or not—there was no denying the deep satisfaction of defeating the best thaumaturgy a team of First Grade wizards could throw at him. Because rightly or wrongly, it was going to take a lot longer than six months to forget what being a despised Third Grade wizard had felt like.
By now the early morning’s blanket of mist had almost completely burned away, so the sun was free to gild the hedgerows and grass verges that bordered the country lane. Wild snapdragons and shy blue-bells danced among the untidy greenery. Tiny scarlet-faced finches hopped and strutted on spindly legs. Momentarily distracted, Gerald smiled. After so long in grimly tarmacked and cobblestoned Nettleworth, where the only grass to be found was in a painting, Finkley Meadows was a literal breath of fresh air. But there was no time to appreciate its postcard prettiness right now. Right now he had more tests to pass.
Abruptly sober, remembering with a nasty twinge why he’d just unravelled that hex, Gerald took a deep breath, cautiously stepped through the gates, and only jumped an inch or two when they slammed shut behind him. On another deep breath, his heart again banging at his ribs, he started walking towards the Department house’s distant front door. More oak trees lined each side of the gravel driveway, their spreading branches and boisterous foliage blotting out the clear blue sky. Beyond their ragged sentinel stand, an unkempt garden swallowed open ground. Lacy shreds of mist tangled amongst the snarled undergrowth, and an ominous chill seeped upwards through the untamed grass, smelling old, and rank, and angry.
He shivered. So much for picturesque.
Despite the general theme of “Don’t tell the new chum anything about the establishment,” a couple of the younger, more recently recruited agents he’d met in passing at headquarters had let one or two small hints slip. Apparently every trainee agent ended up here at the house, where they faced a test designed specifically for them. If they passed, congratulations. Welcome to one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Have fun and don’t forget to sign your will.
“And if we fail?” he’d asked. “What happens then?”
No-one knew. Not for certain. But failed trainees were never seen again.
Remembering that, Gerald shoved his gloveless hands in his overcoat pockets, scrunched his shoulders round his ears and walked a little faster. Nothing but a hobgoblin story, surely. The government couldn’t go around disappearing people. That would be illegal. No, the agents had been playing tricks on him. Probably the senior agents had put the juniors up to it. Old dogs geeing up the new pup. Having some fun at his expense.
“That’s all it is, Reg,” he said in passing to the wood pigeon staring at him from a nearby low branch. “Them taking the mickey. I’ve got nothing to worry about. I’ll be fine.”
The pigeon, who actually didn’t look much like Reg at all, really the only thing they had in common were the feathers, cocked its head to one side and cooed down at him, dimly.
He sighed. “Right. Yes. Thanks so much for that. Very helpful. Most inspiring.”
Lord, he missed Reg.
It occurred to him then, steadily walking, that the house at the end of the driveway wasn’t getting any closer. In fact, it seemed to be further away now than when he’d started.
He stopped. Looked behind him. The closed gates seemed the right distance away, given how long he’d been walking. How strange. He looked back to the house—
—and nearly fell over, because he was on the other side of the gates again, in the muddy laneway, looking through the wrought-iron bars at misty, haphazard chimney pots and higgledy-piggledy gables.
His jaw dropped. “Bloody hell!”
This time the hex wasn’t the same one he’d so painstakingly unravelled a few minutes ago—but it was just as tricky and demanding. He nearly went cross-eyed dismantling it, but at long last the gates swung open. Practically bolting through, he paid no attention as they slammed shut behind him. Put his head down, sprinted for the house—
—and nearly broke his nose on the closed wrought-iron gates.
“What?” he shouted, and jumped up and down a bit. “This is ridiculous! How am I supposed to pass the damned test if I can’t even set foot in the house?”
Except, apparently, this was the test. Or at least the start of it. Obviously the driveway was hexed, just like the front gates. But why hadn’t he sensed it? Worse yet, what else hadn’t he sensed? What other nasty surprises were waiting for him? He didn’t have a bloody clue. Wonderful. His morning was lurching from bad to worse. All right. Think, Dunwoody. Was he supposed to defuse both hexes? No, no, that was too easy. Too obvious. There had to be a different explanation. This was a test devised by Sir Alec, after all. He had to think sideways. He had to think devious.
What is it I’ve been training to be? An age
nt. And what is it agents do? They slide into tricky situations unobtrusively. Hmmm. Nothing terribly unobtrusive about marching through the front gates and up the driveway straight to the front door, is there? So think, you plonker. How else can you get to where you need to go?
Of course he could just blast the establishment’s encompassing high stone wall to rubble. Lord knew he had an arsenal of destructive incants at his fingertips these days. Except much of his janitorial training had been about finesse and subtlety.
So. No blasting, either.
Maybe there were some handy little cracks and crevices under the moss and ivy? Finger-and-toe holds that could help him climb up and over?
But when he tried digging handfuls of green stuff off the stonework the most appalling wave of nausea flooded through him, courtesy of a powerful antiintruder incant. Head reeling, stomach rebelling, he flailed backwards and nearly landed on his rump in the muddy road. Balance recovered, breathing hard, he waited for the awful sickness to subside.
This is embarrassing. I’m a rogue wizard! I turned a cat into a lion. Hell’s bells, I made a dragon… but I can’t get myself over a wall?
Apparently not.
So there was no going through the front gates and no climbing over the wall. That meant there had to be another way in. Disgruntled, he switched his shield-incant back on, because he was in public and that was the arrangement, and started tromping.
The moss-and-ivy covered stonework faithfully followed the edges of the country lane, in places so closely he had to leap down from the narrow verge. There was no sign of another gate or any breach in the wall. At this rate he was never going to find his way in. And would that mean some kind of a Department record? Gerald Dunwoody, rogue agent, the first wizard in history to fail janitorial testing by not even making it through the front door?
Bloody hell. I hope not.
Rounding a sharp bend in the lane, without warning he was confronted by an enormous hay wagon heading straight for him. There wasn’t time to get across the lane to the hedgerow on the other side, and the only way he wasn’t going to get squashed by the dangerously overhanging hay was if he flattened himself against the wall.
Oh no. I am going to be so sick…
With a despairing groan he closed his eyes and turned his face away. Pushed his shoulder-blades, spine and hamstrings flat to the spongy moss and surrendered to the messy inevitable.
Which didn’t happen.
The hay wagon trundled by, its driver oblivious to his discomfort, clearly contemptuous of madcap townie pedestrians who ought to know better than go prancing about the countryside on foot. The wagon’s massively hairy carthorse snorted, matching its driver’s opinion, soup-plate hooves splashing liquid mud and stones.
Remarkably unflattened and miraculously not sick, Gerald gaped at the wall. Then, just to be certain, he leaned his full weight against it. No. Not so much as a quease.
This is absurd. What’s going on? What’s changed?
Only one thing.
He deactivated the shield-incant and warily touched his fingertips to a bare patch of stonework. A wave of nausea immediately crashed over him. Retching, he slammed the shield in place again and the sickness vanished.
Right. Right. There’s a point to this, I know there is. Somewhere here there’s a message. I think. What a pity I don’t speak fluent Sir Alec…
But at least one thing was abundantly clear. With his shield-incant switched on, if push came to shove he could climb the wall. Well. He could climb the wall if he could climb. Except climbing had never really been his thing, not even as a small, mildly adventurous boy. Maybe someone had left a handy sheep-hurdle lying about, that he could hex into a wooden flying carpet. This was the countryside after all. Surely abandoned sheep-hurdles were as common as dandelions…
Except no. They weren’t. But there was, it turned out, a tree growing more-or-less close to the wall, further along the lane. It was better than nothing and all he was going to get.
Muddy, splintered, scraped and bruised, Gerald picked himself up out of the quagmire on the other side of the wall. Snapping off the shield-incant again, he held his breath. Then, when nothing terrible happened, he began clearing a path through out-of-control brambles, feral apple trees and hazelnut-thickets taller than he was, making his way back to the waiting Department house.
This is ridiculous. I’m a wizard, not a wilderness explorer.
Branch by thorn by gnarled, tangled root, the jungle surrendered to his careful incants and he slid his way through it, as inconspicuously, as subtly, as he could. Getting closer, the haphazard chimney pots and higgledy-piggledy gables of the establishment.
With cautious optimism he pushed through the last of the undergrowth into relatively clear ground. Saw oak trees. Saw the gravel driveway. Saw the house’s front door, beckoning. Feeling his face split wide in a smile he tugged his coat free of the last bramble and strode forward.
“Oh, Gerald,” said a petulant voice. “Why did you have to go and kill me? We made such a grand team. You know, together we could have ruled the world.”
CHAPTER TWO
Gerald spun round, his heart thudding. Lional. Not as he’d last seen him, a nightmarish corpse, but exactly as he’d been in his extravagant prime. Dressed in black velvet sewn with seed pearls. Negligently leaning against an accommodating tree trunk. Handsome. Charismatic. Rotten to the core.
It’s in the eyes, he realised, staring at New Ottosland’s improbably resurrected king. It always was. Why didn’t I see it? How did I let myself get fooled?
Except he hadn’t been fooled. Not really. Yes, Lional was deceptive—the king of deception, as it turned out—but in Gerald Dunwoody he’d had a willing accomplice. He hadn’t liked Lional from the moment they met, but the sauce of desperation can make the most revolting meal edible. And there was no getting away from it: after the debacle at Stuttley’s he’d been pretty desperate.
As he stood there, staring at impossible Lional, dreadful memories slithered past his mind’s eye: the cavern. The crimson-and-emerald dragon. The dead and dying of New Ottosland and those who’d been left alive, perpetually maimed.
If this was part of Sir Alec’s test he didn’t much care for it. He’d prepared himself for metaphysical challenges, not a stagger down potholed memory lane.
Lional looked up from inspecting his beautifully manicured fingernails. “You haven’t answered my question, Gerald,” he said, reproachful. “I think that’s rather rude, don’t you?”
He held his ground, just, and with an effort shook off his dismay. “No. You’re not real.”
Lional smiled; a suggestion of crimson scales slid beneath his skin. “Tell that to your nightmares.”
His nightmares. He shivered. “You’re not real now. You died.”
“Tsk tsk, Gerald,” Lional chided. “You used to have much prettier manners. Gratitude would be more becoming, you know. After all, I made you. You could at least say ‘Thank you, Sire’.”
Gerald stared at the gravelled driveway. Every muscle and sinew was screaming at him to turn around and walk away. He’d spent the last six months trying to forget this bastard. Forget the cave, and what had been done to him there. What he’d done. What Lional had seen. But Sir Alec had to have his reasons for such a charade, so he didn’t surrender to the almost overwhelming impulse to retreat. Surrender meant failure.
And I didn’t come all this way to fail.
He looked up. Not to look up, not to look at Lional, would’ve been cowardly. “Thank you? I don’t think so, Lional. Have you forgotten? You made me a murderer.”
“I made you a thaumaturgical god,” retorted Lional. “Pushed you past your dreary moralities so you could get a glimpse of the infinite realm that was waiting for you.”
“The infinite horrors, you mean.”
Sighing, Lional rolled his eyes. “Oh, Gerald. Such melodrama. It doesn’t become you.” He spread his hands wide, entreating. “Don’t you remember what it was like, being a
dragon? All right, as dragons go the one you made was pathetic but the principle still holds. You flew. You were invincible.” Another sigh, sorrowful this time, and his hands dropped. “And then you threw it all away.”
Gerald let dead Lional’s barbed words wash over him. So what was the point of this? Did Sir Alec think he was having second thoughts? Did he want to make sure his newest janitor wasn’t regretting the decision to use his outrageous talents for good? Was he somehow listening to this crazy conversation?
Well, if you are, Sir Alec, prick up your ears and listen to this.
“I did what I had to do, Lional,” he said flatly. “The only thing I could’ve done and still live with myself.”
Ruby rings flashing in the mellow morning light, Lional clasped his elegant hands before him. “No, Gerald. You turned your back on brilliance. You chose dancing to mediocrity’s dull little tune.” Another smile. More hints of sliding crimson. “And now tell me you don’t regret it. Tell me you don’t dream of being a dragon… and repine.”
As though Lional’s words were a summoning, Gerald felt the unnatural forces within him stir. His incandescent potentia, these past months kept strictly confined. In his veins the blood warmed. The ether trembled. The glory of the dragon thrummed through his bones.
“All these rules and regulations, Gerald,” said Lional, with spurious sympathy. “Don’t you find them just the tiniest bit tedious?”
If I did, I wouldn’t tell you. “Rules are important, Lional. They remind us of our ties to one another. They keep us civilised. You never grasped that, and you paid the price.”
“Yes, I thought you did,” said Lional, looking pleased. “A wizard like you, as far beyond First Grade as First Grade surpasses a gnat, chained to mundane, mawkish convention. Manacled by you must and you can’t and under no circumstances shall you. You are so grand, Gerald… and they are so small. So they have to keep you small. It’s the only way they can control you.”
