The Merlin Conspiracy

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “We’re wise to you, you see,” Grundo explained. “But he isn’t. And he’s got two-thirds of his mind on his binding anyway.”

  The Merlin was staring up at us with desperate hope. I looked at Romanov, who was watching the Izzys thoughtfully. “What do you think?” I asked him.

  “It’s worth a try,” he said. “If they can make the slightest break in that spell, I can probably do the rest. I don’t think we’ll get anywhere without some kind of distraction. I’ll give you strong protections,” he said to the Izzys.

  The Izzys looked at him the way courtiers do when a foreign ambassador offers a bribe, very haughty and honorable, with just a touch of well-judged doubt. “My dear, we couldn’t possibly!”

  Nick leaned toward them across the Merlin’s head. “I don’t believe this!” he said. “You get offered the chance to behave as dreadfully as you can, and you turn it down! Where’s your pride, both of you? Go and show us just how awful you can be.”

  They gave him wide-eyed looks. “You mean, flirt with him?” Ilsabil asked.

  “Be rude?” said Isadora. “But, my dear, I’m a polite person!”

  “Then you can’t do it,” Nick said. “Okay. You stopped that fat schoolmaster in the middle of a spell, but this one is about a hundred times more difficult. Sorry I asked. I can see it’s too much for you.”

  The Izzys drew themselves tall. They looked at one another. “Shall we show him?” Ilsabil said.

  “As a great favor,” Isadora suggested. “Graciously.”

  “Right,” Nick said, and without more ado he lifted the nearest twin over the plastic wall. Romanov, grinning a bit, swung the other twin over beside her. “I still think you can’t do it,” Nick said.

  Both Izzys stuck their chins up at him. But they had not done yet. They turned round, with their stomachs and their hands pressed against the wall, and looked sulky. “We need a bribe,” said Isadora.

  “We can’t proceed without,” said Ilsabil. Both pairs of their eyes flickered toward Romanov, calculatingly.

  “Oh, for—” Nick began, but Romanov interrupted him. “What bribe?”

  “One of us is going to be turned out when we’re fifteen,” Ilsabil explained.

  “So could you make it that Heppy dies, please?” Isadora said. “So there will be only three Dimbers and we can both stay.”

  Quite honestly, they took my breath away. The Merlin’s jaw dropped, and we shook our heads at one another, speechless. The boys were not at all speechless. They all said in different hoarse whispers that the Izzys were unfeeling brats—and worse—and then looked nervously over at Joel’s distant, brooding figure, in case he realized what was going on.

  Romanov made no attempt to be furtive. He said, in that level, cutting voice of his, “You must have a very limited outlook. Do you really want to spend your lives in the same old place, doing the same old rituals, year after year? I couldn’t. I was booked to do that, and I couldn’t face it. I got out.”

  The Izzys’ two little pointy faces turned up to his, amazed and arrested. “Do you mean we don’t have to?” said Ilsabil.

  “But we’re hereditary witches,” Isadora said wistfully. “We can’t both leave.”

  “I don’t see why not,” Romanov said. “Haven’t you got any cousins?”

  Ilsabil turned to Isadora. “The hereditary men are always having daughters,” she said. Isadora nodded. They both looked expectantly up at Romanov.

  “I’m sure I can arrange for one of those daughters to take over,” the Merlin said. “But you have to get me free first.”

  They gave him startled looks, as if they had forgotten he was there. Their backs straightened. Their chins stuck out. “We’ll do it,” Ilsabil announced.

  “As a great favor,” Isadora added.

  “Go on, then,” said Romanov.

  They turned round. They raised their arms. Then they advanced upon Joel in his chair with little twinkling steps, wafting their arms like ballet dancers. “Where is this thick, sweaty man?” warbled one.

  “I love men who pray all the time!” the other’s voice rang out. “So godly!”

  “Oh, you’re wonderfully disgusting!” they both cried, and threw their arms round Joel.

  It was marvelous. I leaned on the wall to watch. Joel was jerking around in his seat, looking panicked and bewildered.

  “I don’t think he’s got a chance,” Toby said, full of rare family pride.

  “The glamour’s on like a searchlight,” Grundo agreed.

  Beside me, Romanov was now crouching beside the Merlin’s chair and sweating with effort and urgency. “Back me, friend,” he said to the Merlin. “Help me find the pattern. The thing’s like matted wool.” Then he looked up at me, even more urgently. “You go to Blest and raise the land,” he said to me. “Take the boys with you to help you. You should have done it weeks ago. I’ll join you as soon as I’ve finished here. That way.” He pointed along the wall. “Go that way. And hurry!”

  The four of us set off along the wall at a run. Nick groaned because after a few yards we were in a narrow, rocky passage with no light at all. “I seem to have spent aeons in these paths,” he said, stumbling about. “Bloody ages!”

  Grundo and Toby and I raised magelight the way we had been taught. This was the first time I had done it in earnest, and in spite of my dread that we were going to be too late getting to Blest, I was delighted when the blue light appeared, cupped in my hand. Or I was until our three blue lights blazed in the wide green eyes of a huge, gaunt spotted cat that was trotting swiftly toward us. We all gasped and backed against the rock wall. But the creature simply trotted straight past us, intent on something else. It had such an intent look, in fact, that it brought me out in shivers. It was off to do something terrible.

  “Romanov’s called her,” Nick said, and sighed. Then he cursed again because he couldn’t seem to raise magelight.

  “You had it on your forehead when I first saw you,” I said.

  “That was only because Maxwell Hyde gave it to me,” he said. He was really mortified. He had to get Toby to lead him. “And I suppose we’ll be blundering along here for hours,” he grumbled.

  I don’t know if it was hours. It felt entirely timeless to me. And, as Grundo said, it was better than having to do goat leaps across infinity. Anything was better, to my mind. I just kept hoping that we would arrive in time and that I could manage to raise the land in the way I had discussed with Romanov. And wondering what awful thing might happen if I did.

  To take my mind off it, I said to Grundo, “You knew about the Izzys’ glamour because you were doing the same thing to me, weren’t you?”

  He just gave me one of his smoothly guilty looks and changed the subject. “What did that man Joel mean about atonement?”

  “He and another prayerboy murdered their Prayermaster ten years ago,” Nick said. “He may think he’s making up for that.”

  “What, by messing up Blest and a hundred other worlds?” Toby said. “That doesn’t make sense!”

  “Taking them over in the name of righteousness,” Nick said. “It must make sense to him, or he wouldn’t have been working so hard.”

  They went on trying to understand it, and it didn’t help me at all. Nick had told me not to be so tense all the time, but I couldn’t help it. It seemed to me I had every reason to be tense. I kept thinking of my parents, hidden in that cotton stuff so that I hadn’t even been able to find them, draped in prayer spell, hardly able to ease a crick in their necks, let alone their aching feet, standing, standing, while a religious madman wove the spell tighter and tighter yet. And I knew that if things had gone wrong, Romanov and the Izzys could be standing in that crowd by now, draped in prayer spell, too, and we might be the only ones left who could do anything to help Blest.

  Just as I thought I couldn’t bear any more, the dark path took us downhill into a bright, misty morning, and we were back almost where we had started, in Grandad’s garden in London.

  Dora was
standing by the stump of the goat’s stake, looking woebegone. “The goat’s gone,” she said. “Did you know?”

  She did not seem in the least surprised at our sudden arrival. When Toby went up to her and wrapped his arms around her, she patted his head in an absentminded way and said, “Where were you all yesterday? You should have been here.”

  Toby looked up at her. “What day is it?”

  “Sunday morning,” Dora told him. “Not to worry. You’re all here now.”

  Toby twisted round to look at Nick. “We should have rescued salamanders from the airport last night.”

  “There isn’t a thing we can do about that now,” Nick said. “Dora, you do drive Maxwell Hyde’s car sometimes, don’t you? Would you mind very much driving us all to …” He looked round at me. “Where, Roddy?”

  Romanov had told me of five places where you could raise the land. “One place was not too far from London,” I said. “It hasn’t got a name. He just described it. If we take the main road west, I’ll say when I think we’re there.”

  Dora seemed perfectly willing to drive us. Nick said we’d find some food and eat it in the car, and we were all hurrying toward the house when Grundo growled in my ear, “Salamanders. They were all over the place when we were here before. Where are they?”

  He was right to ask. When we had rushed out to find Helga, I hadn’t exactly been looking for salamanders, but I had known they were there, either scooting out of our way or curled up in warm places, watching us. Now they were not here. If I concentrated very hard, I could sense some of them. They were in hiding, very deep hiding, crouched up, nervous and afraid. The rest were just not there.

  This was not the only thing wrong. Now I was attending, I knew everything was too quiet. I had been in London on a Sunday before, of course, and it was always much quieter than on a weekday. But before, there had always been the hum and mutter of distant people and remote traffic or the occasional thunder of a bus. Now there was hardly any sound, not even from pigeons or sparrows. When I looked at Grandad’s garden, it was standing perfectly still. No insects flew; not a leaf twitched. It was—well—not right.

  TWO RODDY & NICK

  RODDY

  Nick has just come down here to the dining room to tell me he thinks he can’t write about some of this next part. I can’t say I blame him. I’m going to do my best to put everything in, but there is at least one bit I don’t know. I said he must write that. He says he’ll try.

  Anyway, my feeling of something being very wrong got worse as we drove out of London. Because it was such a hot, sultry day, Dora folded back the top of Grandad’s car, and we could look up at the sky. The sky was wrong. There were clouds in the blueness, very pale white, streaky clouds, and instead of being slanted across the sky, as such clouds usually are, these were in a great stationary swirl, with long, vague arms of cloud stretching out of the swirl. Each long, vague arm went stretching away downward to some point that was out of sight over the horizon. Nick said it was like the ghost of a tornado.

  Everything was very misty, too, and statue-still, with the normal summer colors looking unclear and rather dark, as if they were reflected in deep, thick water. None of it smelled quite right. And there were none of the transparent folks tumbling in the hedges in the wind from the car.

  When the road brought us into sight of the green line of the Ridgeway Hills, running along the skyline to our left, those hills were nearly hidden by low, gray, moving clouds that formed big, puffy blue-gray waves, which were all cascading and rushing westward faster than the car. By the time the road brought us nearer to the hills, we were in those clouds. Hot white vapors almost hid the road. Dora was forced to slow right down, so that we could actually see the mist surging across us in waves, galloping into the west.

  We were almost at the right place by then. I could feel the strange tug and pull of it. I was fairly sure it was the same place that Grundo and I had felt on our way to London. Grundo, Toby, and I all cried out, “Here it is! We’re nearly there!” and I said to Dora, “If you could take the next turning left …”

  “Oh, no,” she said.

  This was where it got really frightening.

  I said, “But this is truly the best place. Romanov said. I think it’s a wood—”

  “Oh, no,” Dora said again. “It’s much too near where Toby’s father lives. I can’t take you there.”

  “But you have to, Mum!” Toby cried out. “I went to them—I told them in the wood that I’d go back and call them out. They’re waiting for me. I promised them!”

  Dora said, “And I promised I would do at least this one thing for the group. They’ll be very displeased if I don’t.” And she kept driving.

  “Oh, please!” Toby said. I had never known him so upset. Tears were bursting out of his eyes and rolling down his shirt. I remembered, with a quiver of fright in my stomach, that Dora had always been at least half dotty, and Toby knew she was.

  “Where do you think you’re driving us, then?” Nick said belligerently to Dora. He was in the front seat, and he more or less turned and shouted in Dora’s face.

  “Stonehenge,” Dora said. “It’ll be quite all right then. They promised me.”

  I almost relaxed at that. Stonehenge was one of the other four places Romanov had told me. But Nick said suspiciously, “Who told you to take us to Stonehenge? Toby’s dad?”

  “And Mrs. Blantyre,” Dora said placidly. “And the sweet young man they get their orders from. I think he said he was the Merlin, but I’m not sure. He said that this was the least I could do. I was quite worried yesterday when I couldn’t find any of you, because I didn’t want to let them down, did I?”

  “Mum!” Toby shouted. “I made a promise, too! Stop the car!” He stood up and gave Dora’s shoulder a shake, but the car swerved so violently that he sat down again quickly.

  Nick tried cunning then. He said, “Dora, how about we stop the car and keep Toby’s promise first? Then we can go on to Stonehenge and keep yours.”

  Dora shook her head. “No, dear. Please don’t try any Oriental blandishments on me. I do know when someone’s trying to get round me.” And we bucketed on, with waves of mist rolling across us and away in front of us.

  Nick and Toby both shot me desperate looks. Nick leaned over and tried to put on the handbrake—he says this is the only control that’s the same as an Earth car—but he couldn’t do it, even heaving with both hands. “What have you done to this?” he asked Dora.

  “Nothing,” she said, “but Mrs. Blantyre did promise me she would make sure we got there. She’s clever, isn’t she? Now, do be good. It’s so hard to see in all this fog.”

  Grundo leaned over the side to see if it was possible to jump out, but we were going far too fast. He sat down and looked at me. “It may be all right,” I said. “Stonehenge was another of Romanov’s places.”

  “Stonehenge is the place,” Dora said happily. “The King is going to abdicate there today.” As she said this, the roof of the car rolled back over us and we found that none of the doors would open. We roared onward in a warm box surrounded in fog, and there seemed no way of stopping Dora that wouldn’t crash the car. All my flower files were useless, useless, because the hurt lady had never known about cars, and I had never known much myself either.

  I know the others tried things. Grundo tried an illusion of people in the road ahead, but he was upset, so they came out behind the car. Shadowy people chased us through the fog for miles. My idea was to give Dora cramp and a crick in her neck, but either this Mrs. Blantyre of hers had thought of that or Dora just ignored what I did to her. Toby tried an illusion of the controls bursting into flame, but Dora knew it was him.

  “Toby,” she said reproachfully, “don’t play tricks while I’m driving. It’s not safe.”

  Toby sighed, and the fire vanished. And Nick …

  NICK

  Yes, well, I called that dragon.

  I didn’t do it just because I was scared spitless—although I w
as. The sight of the silly, dreamy smile on Dora’s face while she refused to stop driving was one of the scariest things that had happened so far. But as soon as she mentioned the Merlin, I knew it was serious for a lot more reasons than just my own safety. I thought through the way Joel had talked, and how urgent Romanov had been, and what Roddy had told me, and I thought I’d better do what I could, and do it before we got out of range.

  I shut my eyes and concentrated, the way Maxwell Hyde had tried to teach me. I’d never done it right before. I suppose I’d lacked the incentive. It surprised the hell out of me when I found I was sort of floating beside the hillside, where the turf rolled back to show the dragon’s vast white head. We were swamped in mist, both of us. His big green eye was open and turning this way and that to watch the waves of cloud rushing across him, but the eye turned and looked at me when I got there, even though I was really sitting in a car speeding away from him.

  “YOU AGAIN,” he said. Just like Romanov. “HAVE YOU COME TO CALL ME OUT THIS TIME?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s time. I summon you.”

  “YOU LEFT IT A BIT LATE,” he said, “IN MY OPINION. VERY WELL. IT WILL TAKE ME AWHILE TO WORK LOOSE. AND REMEMBER WHAT I SAID. I DON’T LIKE BEING CALLED. PEOPLE ARE GOING TO GET HURT. YOU ARE GOING TO GET HURT. NOW GO AWAY.”

  I went away, fast. I flipped back into the car, shaking all over, and found we were on a stretch of road that was not in fog any longer. Dora was fair batting along it. She had her foot right down most of the rest of the way. It was frightening.

  RODDY

  It was thoroughly frightening. It was also very hot, too, as if the fine weather that my father had never been allowed to cancel was getting out of hand somehow. With the heat there was the sour, disinfectant-like smell you get when magic is being done. At first I assumed it was coming from the spells that were holding the car doors shut, but then, slowly, I realized that it was coming from everywhere. It was outside, not simply in the car. And finally I realized what it was. It was the smell of quantities of magic being moved. It was the way things smelled when all the magic in the countryside was being pulled, and sucked, and dragged, into one place.