The Merlin Conspiracy

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “Oh, gods!” I said. Everyone except Dora looked at me anxiously. “It’s the magic,” I said. “Someone’s pulling in all the magic of Blest.”

  “So how do we stop it?” said Nick.

  He said this as if he really thought it was possible—build a dam, suck in the opposite direction—I don’t know what he thought, but it made Dora drive even faster, as if she was afraid Nick would really find some way to deal with the magic, huge as it was, unless we got to Stonehenge quickly. I could feel her adding in a speed-the-journey spell. It was a variant of the fifth one in my Traveler’s Joy file, and it had a foreign feel, as if someone else had provided it for her. It was strong. We were on Salisbury Plain five minutes after Nick asked his question.

  Bare green distances rushed by. And suddenly, in that way it has of turning up, unexpectedly small and indescribably massive, there was Stonehenge.

  We bumped across the grass right beside the enormous stones of it, and Nick said, “There’s a lot more of it standing than there is on Earth.”

  I hardly heard him. Too many other things grabbed my attention. I thought I caught a glimpse of Salisbury standing near one of the stones, just a sight of green rubber boots as we bumped past, and a flutter of ragged coat that might have been Old Sarum squatting beside the boots. But the main thing that held my attention was the great orderly jumble of cars, buses, and lorries parked downhill from the henge. And despite all I knew, I found myself thinking, Oh, good! We’ve caught up with the Progress at last!

  What a stupid way to think! I told myself as Dora stopped the car. Every single person who might have been friendly to us was currently in a xanadu worlds away, shrouded in white spells of binding. As proof of this, the car was instantly surrounded by royal pages, who came running up while the car was still moving and pulled the doors open as soon as it stopped. They were Alicia’s lot, all the people of Alicia’s age whom I particularly did not like, and they stood in a close circle with official, polite looks on their faces—except that the polite looks were just slightly exaggerated, so that we knew it was a mass jeer, really.

  “If you will come this way, please,” Alicia herself said, reaching in and hauling on my arm.

  Her fingers dug, but I hardly noticed. We climbed out into such a storm of magic that it made me quite dazed. It set the hurt lady’s knowledge racing randomly through my brain: Purple Vetch: vortex; Goose Grass or Cleavers: bindings; Gorse: land and home magics; Woody Nightshade: spells of evil intent, death spells, and sacrifices; Foxglove: raising of power; and so many more that I went dizzy and could only see things around me as sick-colored shadows for a minute or so. Then my brain steadied on Purple Vetch, and I knew what was happening. We were at the center of a vortex here, where all the magic in Blest, and for worlds around Blest, was coming roaring and soundlessly howling inward to a spot right beside Stonehenge. I could feel it. I could see it, too, in the swirls of white cloud that marked the lines of force in the blue sky, winding and dragging inward to an icy spearpoint of power only yards away. I found I was bending sideways from it as Alicia hauled me politely toward it.

  I hardly saw—but noticed all the same—a perfectly horrible woman leading Dora away, patting her and praising her as if she were a dog. “Good girl! Well done! Doesn’t it feel better now you’ve done what you owed your friends to do?” Poor, silly Dora. She was beaming and nodding and looking shamed, all at once.

  Another thing I hardly saw, but noticed all the same, was the way the pages expertly cleared a path for us through the crowds of people gathered in a ring around the point of the vortex. Some were people I knew from Court, but most of them were folk I’d never seen before, a lot of them like the horrid woman praising Dora, and crowds of men with beards and dishonest faces—many of these had too much hair and golden disks on their chests in the manner of priests—and large numbers of men and women who struck me as like Dora: not quite sure what they were doing here.

  When we reached the space in the center of the crowd, I hardly saw, but noticed all the same, that it was packed tight with the transparent folks. They had been pulled here by the magic, and now they were being drawn on for their own magic. Their hard-to-see bodies bumped aside to let us through, and bumped and blundered high into the air, until they were crushed together into the white lines of the vortex clouds, where they were borne rushing downward again. The space was full of their soundless screams and their dreadful anxiety. They were terrified and horrified, but wildly excited as well, as if they couldn’t help themselves.

  There was more dreadful anxiety from the fringes of the crowd, but I couldn’t find who it was coming from. All I knew was that a lot of someones were there, more worried than I cared to think about.

  In the center of the space was Sybil, dancing. Her big, square-toed feet were bare, and her green skirts were hauled halfway up her massive legs. She must have been dancing for hours. When she saw us, she shouted, “Hai!” and flung her arms up, and I saw great dark patches of sweat spreading from her armpits almost to her waist.

  Two chairs had been put facing one another on the grass, about ten yards apart. The King sat in one, looking royal and expressionless, with Prince Edmund standing beside him. The two Archbishops stood behind the chair, wearing robes and miters. Each of them had a puzzled and slightly distant smile, as if they had no more idea than Dora what was going on but felt they ought to look benevolent all the same.

  The Merlin sat in the other chair. False Merlin, I should say. Now I had met the real one, I could see that this one’s face was rattier and his hair fairer. But they were very alike. They both had the long neck and the big Adam’s apple and the same small, pointed face. Maybe this was what had put the idea of the conspiracy into this one’s head. But I had the feeling that he wasn’t pretending to be anyone except himself now. He was in plain brown robes that reeked of power, and he sat in the same pose as a saint in a statue. Sir James was standing to one side of him, looking smug in a smart suit. There was a big box on the other side of the false Merlin. In front of him was a large silver bucket—or maybe it was a cauldron—that smoked cold white smoke. This was where the point of the vortex of magic rested.

  Grundo muttered beside me, “It would make more sense if they were inside Stonehenge. Why aren’t they?”

  “They can’t. It won’t let them,” Nick answered, sort of absently. He was staring at the false Merlin as if he recognized him.

  I glanced up at the gray huddle of stones beyond the crowds and saw that what Nick said was true. Stonehenge, in some strange way, was not really present. It seemed to have gone several layers of reality away from here. I think this is how it protects itself.

  “He has to be Japheth,” Nick said. “That ratty look.”

  Sybil rushed up to us and waved Alicia and the other pages aside. She finished the movement with her arms aloft again. “The ceremony can begin!” she shouted. “Our sacrifice is come among us!” In a big gust of sweat smell, she seized Grundo’s arm. “Now, you be good,” she said to him, “and we won’t hurt you more than we have to.”

  Toby and I stared at her. Under the sweat, her face was like red sandpaper, and her eyes didn’t quite see anything, like a drunk person’s. She seemed to have no feeling for Grundo at all. Nick put his big hand over Sybil’s chubby one and wrenched it off Grundo’s arm. “Leave him!” he thundered out, glaring at Sybil. Sybil stared into air behind Nick and went on blindly grabbing at Grundo.

  The false Merlin looked across at us.

  He stared. Then he sprang up and came striding over to us, robes streaming, and pushed Alicia aside so that he could walk right up to Nick. He stood with his small pale face more or less nose to nose with Nick’s darker one. “You!” he said. “You’re supposed to be dead! You laughed at me!”

  I have never seen such hatred. Spittle came out of the false Merlin’s lips with the strength of that hatred. He shook all over with it.

  Nick tried to lean back, away from the flying spit. “What of it? You trod on a
n egg. It was funny.”

  “What of it!” the false Merlin more or less screamed. “I’ll show you what of it! I’ve dreamed of you dead for ten years now! Today you are going to be dead—as painfully as I can manage!” He turned and said to Sybil, in a normal, cold voice, “Leave that child. This boy will give us far more power.” Then he went calmly back to his chair again.

  Gods! I thought. He’s mad, quite mad! And Nick had said he was a murderer, too. I was terrified.

  Sybil let go of Grundo. She seemed to be entirely under the false Merlin’s influence. She beckoned to Nick. At once a skein of transparent folks swooped from the vortex, surrounded Nick, and pulled him into the open space. I tried to stop them. I am entirely in a muddle as to whether this was what I would have done for anyone or whether it was because it was Nick. I do know my heart hammered in my throat and I put out my hands and tried to make the transparent folk stop. But your hands go through, or past, or slide off these people, and they were far too sunk in the storm of magic to heed me. I suppose to most of the onlookers it must have seemed as if Nick stumbled out into the open all by himself and then fell down on the grass.

  “The sacrifice has presented himself!” Sybil proclaimed.

  The false Merlin grinned. “So he has,” he said. His long, skinny arm reached out to the box beside his chair, where he flipped up a small flap in the top, groped a bit, and came up clutching a writhing bundle of salamanders. As the flap snapped down again, he reached forward and dipped the salamanders into the smoking silver bucket, quite slowly.

  It was colder than the coldest ice in there. The soundless scream from those poor salamanders as they met that cold went through us all like an electric shock. But it went through Nick in a much worse way. His body became covered at once in hurrying silver ripples. The ripples chased and overlapped one another and formed silver leaf shapes, as if he were under the shallow sea with the sun on the waves. He was in obvious agony from it. He rolled about, trying to scream—or not being able to scream—and every time the ripples formed into a leaf shape this seemed to hurt him even more. He curled up, he uncurled, he flung his legs and arms about, much as the salamanders were doing in the false Merlin’s fist.

  “There is really nothing like a willing sacrifice,” the false Merlin said. He looked to see if the salamanders were recovering a little and calmly dipped them in the smoking bucket again. Sir James—disgusting man!—leaned eagerly over to watch.

  “Oh, he mustn’t!” Toby said despairingly. Possibly he was sorry for Nick, but being Toby, I suspect he was mostly feeling for those salamanders.

  “No, he mustn’t, must he?” Grundo agreed.

  Here the King seemed to notice what was going on, or some of it. He looked from Nick to the false Merlin and said, “What’s this? Eh?”

  Toby was jigging about in his distress. Alicia jabbed him with her elbow and said, “Quiet. Don’t interrupt.”

  “Your Majesty.” The false Merlin smiled and stood up, flourishing his handful of agonized, dying salamanders. “We are gathered here today to reinstate the old, true form of kingship. As has been explained to Your Majesty, yours are not the old, true forms. You make use of technology, and you have little or no dealings with the magic of Blest, and this has caused the old, true forms to warp and degenerate. You therefore intend to abdicate.” He looked sternly at the King. “Don’t you, Your Majesty?”

  The King rubbed his hands across his face in a bewildered way. “Abdicate? Yes, I suppose we came here for something like that,” he agreed, but not as if he was at all sure. “What happens then?”

  “Why, then we install a true King!” the false Merlin announced, as ringingly as such a reedy voice as his was able. “We ratify the Prince Edmund in your place, in the presence of both Archbishops and the priests of all other religions, and we seal it in proper form with the blood of a sacrifice.”

  “Oh,” said the King. For a moment he looked startled and a little disgusted. Then he said placidly, “Very well, then. If Edmund …”

  He stopped, distracted, because the false Merlin stooped and once more plunged the wretched salamanders into the white smokes of the bucket. This time they died. The shock was like the crack of a whip. The ripples were so thick over Nick that you could hardly see him, just a rolling, thrashing something under a moving silver web.

  “Look here,” said Prince Edmund. He came out from behind the King to stand and stare at what could be seen of Nick. “I don’t think this is— I mean, is this a human sacrifice you’re talking about? I’m not sure— What happens then?”

  Well, fancy this! I thought. Prince Edmund is a decent human being after all! But that was before Sybil came tramping up to him and laid her fat hand against his arm. “Your Highness,” she said, in the kind of low, tactful voice that everyone can hear, “if you are unwilling, please say so at once. Your Highness has four younger brothers, any of whom might wish to guide these islands along the one true way in your place.”

  You could see this not appealing to the Prince at all. He never did like his brothers. He said, “Oh, in that case …”

  “Then hearken to the Merlin as he prophesies,” Sybil suggested, and stood back.

  The Prince and the King both looked inquiringly at the false Merlin, who gave them a merry smile, tossed the dead salamanders on the grass, and put his hands in the rope-pulling position, by which we were supposed to understand that he was making a prophecy. But I could see he was just pretending. He said, “This sacrifice both anoints our new King and brings the power of all Blest to the crown. By this sacrifice, we shall raise the land and bring peace and prosperity …”

  I think he went on for some time, but I stopped listening. As soon as he said “raise the land,” I realized that this was exactly what he was doing. And he couldn’t be allowed to, not like this! Doing it by a blood sacrifice would bring Blest and all the worlds surrounding it into the realm of purest black magic. The balance would be tipped entirely the wrong way.

  I fought my way out from the hurricane of magic and horror and tried to think through the hurt woman’s files again. They rushed into my head, file after file—Purple Vetch, Goose Grass, Foxglove, Teasel, Gorse, Mullein, Dog Rose, Thistle, Nightshade, poison, invisible peoples, sex magics, journeys, the dead, bird magic, shape shifting, summoning, unbinding—on and on, in a wild waterfall of spells. At first they seemed to be no use at all. But that phrase raise the land had given me such a jolt that before long it seemed to steady the rush down. I saw that they did not come into my head in any old order: they started with Purple Vetch for vortex and followed that with spells of binding and unbinding. Seeing that stopped the rush of files almost entirely. And I knew that I had known how to raise the land long before Romanov tried to explain it to me.

  Each file, down at the very end, had what the hurt woman called its Great Spell, one that encompassed all the others. What Romanov had told me amounted simply to unbinding these. You started with vortex. Then you went on to unbinding in its Great form, and as you unbound the vortex, you fed into it each of the other Great Spells, good and bad alike, and you made them all unravel. The gods alone knew what would happen then! I almost turned to Grundo then. I wanted to ask him if he thought we would all be entirely without magic ever after.

  Grundo’s face had gone white and secretive, and he wouldn’t look at me. All my earlier hurt came back. Grundo never needed me, he just used me, he never cared— Then I realized that Grundo was trying to work magic, too. It was something directional, by his look, which was always difficult for him, because he had to turn everything round the other way, against the grain of his mind. He was scowling, pouting the skin above his long nose as he concentrated.

  By this time, as the false Merlin blathered on, the ripples were dying away from Nick. He was lying with his face in his arms, exhausted by the convulsions they had put him through. The false Merlin noticed. A mean look came over his face, and, still prophesying, he went over to the box and reached for another handful of salama
nders.

  Grundo burst the box open as he did so.

  Toby cheered. It was wonderful for a moment. The sides fell out, and the lid flew up and hit the false Merlin in the face. The salamanders inside, hundreds and hundreds of them, had been packed and crammed in there, thoroughly miserable, anyway, and then panic-stricken when the first handful died. They came out like a small volcano. They showered into the air and then ran everywhere, incandescent with fear, setting the grass alight, raising smoke and flames and howls from the people in the ring of spectators. The false Merlin howled as loud as anyone. Sir James got a salamander on his smart hat and tried to beat the fire out on the chair, while Sybil ran and pranced and jumped to avoid red-hot salamanders running across her bare feet.

  But it only lasted a minute or so. Those salamanders were so truly terrified that they all ran away as fast as they could, flashing among the feet of the crowd and diving under cars and buses, cooling off as they ran. By far the most of them seemed to race uphill, in among the great trilithons of Stonehenge. I think they were safe there. They seemed to be able to go away into the same distant layer of reality as Stonehenge itself and stay there.

  Alicia had realized that it was Grundo who let them out. Well, she would. She took him by one ear and shook him, silently and fiercely, with her nails digging in. “Little beast!” she whispered. “Little pig!”

  Two days ago that would have got all my attention at once. Now I realized that Grundo was distracting Alicia from me just when I needed it. It was quite hard, but I’m afraid I let Grundo suffer. I began trying to raise the land.

  Vortex was there already. I only had to touch the spell in Purple Vetch to make it my magic and not Sybil’s or the false Merlin’s. The whirling in my head intensified, but I tried to ignore it and went on to Goose Grass or Cleavers and the Great Unbinding at the end of it. Ideally, you had to make a model of what you needed to unbind—it was like a hideously complicated cat’s cradle—and then say the words as you undid it. Because I couldn’t do that, I was forced to do it all in my head, imagining each strand of the cradle and the movements I might have used to untwist them and saying the words in my head, too. Try as I might, I couldn’t help making small twisting movements with my fingers. It was too difficult otherwise. And I couldn’t manage a translation of the words. I had to think them through in the hurt woman’s language, and I believe I was murmuring them as I worked.