The Merlin Conspiracy

Everyone began crowding up the ladder into the nearest helicopter-thing. The man who had spoken to me pushed me up ahead of him and swung on to the ladder after me. This must have put his face up against my legs, because he said angrily, “Didn’t the academy tell you to wear your leathers for this?”

I thought I knew then. I was sure this was one of my dreams about getting into another world and that it had got mixed up with the sort of dream where you’re on a bus with no clothes on, or talking to a girl you fancy with the front of your trousers missing. So I wasn’t particularly bothered. I just said, “No, they didn’t tell me anything.”

He made an irritated noise. “You’re supposed to be skyclad for official workings. They should know that!” he said. “You didn’t eat before you came, did you?” He sounded quite scandalised about it.

“No,” I said. Dad and I had been going to have supper after we’d listened to Maxwell Hyde. I was quite hungry, now I thought of it.

“Well, that’s a relief!” he said, pushing me forward into the inside of the flyer. “You have to be fasting for a major working like this. Yours is the pull-down seat at the back there.”

It would be! I thought. There were nice padded seats all round under the windows, but the one at the back was just a kind of slab. Everyone else was settling into the good seats and snapping seat belts around them, so I found the belts that went with the slab and did them up. I’d just got the buckles sussed when I looked up to find the man with the cellphone leaning over me.

“You,” he said, “were late. Top brass is not pleased. You kept the Prince waiting for nearly twenty minutes and HRH is not a patient man.”

“Sorry,” I said. But he went on and on, leaning over me and bawling me out. I didn’t need to listen to it much because the engines started then, roaring and clattering, and everything shook. Some of the noise was from the other fliers. I could see them sideways beyond his angry face, rising up into the air one after another, about six of them, and I wondered what made them fly. They didn’t have wings or rotors.

Eventually, a warning ping sounded. The bawling man gave me a menacing look and went to strap himself in beside his mates. They were all wearing some kind of uniform, sort of like soldiers, and the one who had bawled at me had coloured stripes round his sleeves. I supposed he was the officer. The men nearest me, four of them, were all dressed in dirty pale suede. Skyclad, I thought. Whatever that meant.

Then we were rising up into the air and roaring after the other fliers. I leaned over to the window and looked down, trying to see where this was. I saw the Thames winding underneath among crowds of houses, so I knew we were over London, but in a dreamlike way there was no London Eye, though I spotted the Tower and Tower Bridge, and where I thought St Paul’s ought to be there was a huge white church with three square towers and a steeple. After that we went tilting away southwards and I was looking down on misty green fields. Not long after that we were over the sea.

About then, the noise seemed to get less – or maybe I got used to it – and I could hear what the men in suede were saying. Mostly it was just grumbles about having to get up so early and how they were hungry already, along with jokes I didn’t understand, but I gathered that the one who had talked to me was Dave and the big one with the foreign accent was Arnold. The other two were Chick and Pierre. None of them took any notice of me.

Dave was still irritated. He said angrily, “I can sympathise with his passion for cricket, but why does he have to play it in Marseilles, for the powers’ sake?”

Pierre said, slightly shocked, “That’s where England are playing. HRH is a world-class batsman, you know.”

“But,” Dave said, “until last night he wasn’t going to be in the team.”

“He changed his mind. Royal privilege,” said Arnold with the foreign accent.

“That’s our Geoff for you!” Chick said, laughing.

“I know. That worries me,” Dave answered. “What’s he going to be like when he’s King?”

“Oh, give him the right advisors and he’ll be all right,” Chick said soothingly. “His royal dad was just the same when he was Crown Prince, they say.”

This is a really mad dream, I thought. Cricket in France!

We droned on for ages. The sun came up and glared in through the left-hand windows. Pretty soon all the soldiers down the other end had their jackets off and were playing some sort of card game, in a slow, bored way. The men in suede didn’t seem to be allowed to take their jackets off. They sweated. It got quite niffy down my end. And I’d been assuming that they weren’t allowed to smoke in the flier, but that turned out to be wrong. The soldiers all lit up and so did Dave. The air soon became thick with smoke on top of the smell of sweat. It got worse when Arnold lit up a thin, black thing that smelt like a wet bonfire.

“Yik!” said Pierre. “Where did you get hold of that?”

“Aztec Empire,” Arnold said, peacefully puffing out brown clouds.

I shall wake up from this dream with cancer! I thought. The slab seat was hard. I shifted about and ached. Most of the people fell asleep after an hour or so, but I couldn’t. I supposed at the time that it was because I was asleep already. I know that seems silly, but it was all so strange and I’d been so used to dreaming, for months now, that I had found my way into another world that I really and truly believed that this was just another of those dreams. I sat and sweated while we droned on, and even that didn’t alert me to the fact that this might be real. Dreams usually sort of fast-forward long journeys and things like that, but I didn’t think of that. I just thought the journey was the dream.

At last, there was another of those warning pings. The officer reached into his jacket for his phone and talked to it for a short while. Then he put the jacket on and came towards the men in suede, who were all stretching and yawning and looking bleary.

“Messieurs,” he said, “you’ll have twenty minutes. The royal flit will circle during that time under the protection of the Prince’s personal mages and then put down on the pavilion roof. You’re expected to have the stadium secured by then. All right?”

“All right,” Arnold agreed. “Thanks, monsieur.” Then, when the officer had gone back to the other soldiers, he said, “Bloody powers!”

“Going to have to hustle, aren’t we?” Chick said. He jerked his head towards me. “What do we do about him? He’s not skyclad.”

Arnold was the one in charge. He blinked slowly at me as if he’d noticed me for the first time. “Not really a problem,” he said. “He’ll have to keep out of the circle, that’s all. We’ll put him on boundary patrol.” Then he actually spoke to me. “You, mon gar,” he said, “will do exactly as we say at all times, and if you set so much as a toe over the wardings, I’ll have your guts for garters. That clear?”

I nodded. I wanted to tell him that I hadn’t the faintest idea what we were supposed to be doing, but I didn’t quite like to. Anyway the flier – flit or whatever – started making a great deal more noise and going downwards in jerks, hanging in the air and then jerking sickeningly down again. I swallowed and sat back, thinking that it would probably all be obvious what to do, the way it is in dreams, and took a look out of the window. I had just time to see a big oval of green stadium surrounded by banks of seats crowded with people, and blue, blue sea somewhere beyond that, before we came down with a grinding thump and everyone leapt up.

The soldiers went racing and clattering off to take up positions round the roof we’d landed on. They were carrying rifles. It was serious security. We clattered off after them into scalding sunlight and I found myself ducking as the flier roared off into the air again just above my head, covering us in an instant of deep blue shadow. As it did, the others bent over some kind of compass that Dave had fetched out.

“North’s up the narrow end opposite,” Dave said, “pretty exactly.”

“Right,” said Arnold. “Then we go the quickest way.” And he led us rushing down some stairs at the corner of the roof. We clattered along boards then, somewhere high up along the front of the pavilion, and raced on down much steeper stairs with crowds of well-dressed people on either side. They all turned to stare at us. “Ceux sont les sorciers,” I heard someone say, and again, when we got to the smart white gate at the bottom of the stairs and a wrinkled old fellow in a white coat opened it for us, he turned to someone and said knowingly, “Ah. Les sorciers.” I reckon it meant, Those are the mages, you know.

We rushed out into the enormous stadium, hurrying across acres of green, green grass with blurred banks of faces all round and all staring at us. It really was exactly like my worst dreams. I felt about an inch high as Arnold led us trotting straight towards the opposite end of the oval. I could see he was going to take us right across the square of even greener grass where the wicket was laid out, flat and brownish, right in front of us.

Now, I’m not much for cricket myself, but I did know that you were never, ever supposed to run on the sacred wicket. I wondered whether to say something. I was quite relieved when Pierre panted out, “Er – Arnold – not on the wicket – really.”

“What? Oh. Yes,” Arnold said, and he took a small curve, so that we went trotting just beside the strip of bare rolled turf.

Pierre turned his eyes up and murmured to Chick, “He’s from Schleswig-Holstein. What can you expect?”

“Empire’s full of barbarians,” Chick panted back in a whisper.

We hastened on to the end of the stadium, where we had to do another detour, around the sightscreen. There was a grille behind it blocking an archway under the seating. Soldiers let us through and we plunged into chilly, concrete gloom beyond, where we really got busy. We were in the space underneath the seats there, which ran right round the stadium like a concrete underpass, including under the pavilion. I know it did, because I was forced to rush all round it three times.

Arnold dumped down the bag he was carrying on the spot Dave said was the exact North and snatched out of it five big sugar-shakers full of water. “Ready blessed,” he said, jamming one into my hand. Then they shoved me behind them and stood in a row gabbling some kind of incantation. After that, they were off, shouting at me to come along and stop dossing, pelting down the arched concrete space, madly sprinkling water as they ran and shoving me repeatedly so that I didn’t tread inside the wet line, until Dave said, “East.” They stopped and gabbled another invocation, and then they charged on, sprinkling again, until Dave said, “South,” where they stopped and gabbled too. Then we pelted off once more to gabble at West, then on round to North again. The water just lasted.

I hoped that was it then, but no. We dumped the empty water-shakers and Arnold fetched out five things that looked like lighted candles but were really electric torches. Neat things. They must have had strange batteries, because they flickered and flared just like real candles as we raced around to East once more with our feet booming echoes out of the concrete corridor. This time when Dave said “East”, Chick slammed his candle-torch down on the floor and stood gabbling. I nearly got left behind there because I was staring at Chick drawing what looked like a belt-knife and pulling it out as if it were toffee or something so that it was like a sword, which he stood holding point upwards in front of his face. I had to sprint to catch the others up, and I only reached them as Dave was singing out, “South!” They shed Pierre and his candle there and, as we pelted off, Pierre was pulling a knife out into a sword too.

At West, it was Dave’s turn to stand pulling a knife into a sword and gabbling. Arnold and I rushed on together to North. Luckily, Arnold was so big he was not much of a runner and I could keep up. I’d no breath left by then. When we got round to Arnold’s bag again, he plonked down his candle and remarked, “I hold North because I’m the strongest. It’s the most dangerous ward of all.” Then, instead of drawing his belt-knife, he took my candle-torch away and passed me a gigantic salt-shaker.

I stared at it.

“All round again with this,” Arnold said. “Make sure it’s a continuous line and that you keep outside the line.”

It’s one of those dreams, I thought. I sighed. I grabbed the salt and set off the other way to make a change.

“No, no!” he howled. “Not widdershins, you fool! Deosil! And run. You’ve got to get round before the Prince lands!”

“Making my third four-minute mile,” I said.

“Pretty well,” he agreed. “Go!”

So off I went, pouring salt and stumbling over my own feet as I tried to see where I was pouring it, past Chick standing with his sword like a statue, past soldiers I was almost too busy to notice, who were on guard about every fifty feet, and on round to Pierre, also standing like a statue. When I got to him, I could hear the nearby blatting of a flier and cheering in the distance. Pierre shot me an angry, urgent look. Obviously, this Prince had more or less landed by then. I sped on, frantically sprinkling salt, getting better at it now. Even so, it seemed an age before I got round to Dave, and another age before I got back to Arnold again. The cheering overhead was like thunder by then.

“Just about made it,” Arnold said. He had a sword by now and was standing like the others, looking sort of remote, behind his candle-thing. “Make sure the line of salt joins up behind me, then put the shaker back in the bag and get on guard.”

“Er…” I said. “I’m not sure—”

He more or less roared at me. “Didn’t they teach you anything at the academy? I shall lodge a complaint.” Then he seemed to pull himself together and sort of recited at me, the way you might tell a total idiot how to dial 999 in an emergency, “Choose your spot, go into a light trance, enter the otherwhere, pick up your totem beast and go on patrol with it. If you see anything out of the ordinary – anything at all – come and tell me. Now go and get on with it!”

“Right,” I said. “Thanks.” I threw the salt-shaker into the bag and wandered away. Now what? I thought. It was fairly clear to me that what we had been doing in such a hurry was casting a circle of magic protection around this French cricket stadium, but it struck me as pretty boring, mass-produced sort of magic. I couldn’t see how it could possibly work, but I supposed it kept them happy, them and this Prince of theirs. The stupid thing was that I had been dying to learn magic. Part of the way I kept trying to walk to other worlds was to do with my wanting, above anything else, to be a proper magician, to know magic and be able to work it for myself. Now here was this dream making it seem just boring. And probably useless.

That’s dreams for you, I thought, wandering on through the tunnel under the seats. Since I had no idea how to do the stuff Arnold had told me, the only thing I could do was to keep out of his sight, and out of Chick’s sight too, on round the curve in the East. I trudged past the first soldier on guard and, as soon as the curve of the passage hid him from sight, I simply sat down with my back to the outside wall.

It was a pretty dismal place, full of gritty, gloomy echoes and gritty, gloomy concrete smells. People had used it to pee in too, which didn’t help. It felt damp. As I was soaked with sweat from all that running, I began to feel clammy almost at once. At least it wasn’t dark. There were orange striplights in the concrete ceiling and holes in the concrete back wall. The holes were high up and covered with grids, but they did let in slants of bright sun that cut through the gritty air in regular white slices.

Not much to look at except a line of salt, I thought. At least I was better off than Arnold and the rest. I didn’t have to keep staring at a sword. And for the first time, I began to wonder how long we’d all have to stay here. For the whole time it took this Prince to play in a Test Match? Those could go on for days. And the frustrating thing about this dream, I thought, as I heard clapping far away over my head, was the way I never set eyes on this Prince all the fuss was about.

I think I went to sleep. It made sense to think so. I was quite jet-lagged by then, given I’d set off before supper, arrived at dawn and then flown all the way to the south of France, followed by running round the stadium three times.

But it didn’t quite feel like sleep. I felt as if I got up, leaving myself sitting there, and walked off along an inviting, bluish, shady path I’d suddenly noticed. This path led upwards and sort of sideways from the concrete passage, out of the smells and clamminess, into a cool, rustling wood. This was such a relief that I didn’t feel tired any more. I stretched and snuffed up the cool green smells – pine trees and a sharp, gummy scent from head high ferns, and bark and leaves and bushes that smelt almost like incense – and I kept on walking, deeper into the wood and uphill.

The incense bushes in front of me started rustling. Then the ferns swayed.

I stopped. I kept very still. I could feel my heart banging. Something was definitely coming. But I was still not prepared for it when it did.

The ferns parted and a smooth black head slid out and stared me in the face with huge yellow eyes. For just one instant I was nose to nose with an enormous black panther.

Then I was up a tree, the tallest tree I could find.

In between was a blur of absolute terror. If I think about it, carefully, I think the panther sort of said Oh, hallo in wordless panther talk, and I’m fairly sure I screamed. And I do, slightly, remember staring around with tremendous speed to choose the best tree, and then listening to my own breath coming in sort of shrieks while I shot up this tree, and I even remember yelling “Ouch!” when I peeled one of my nails back on the way up.

Then it all stops with me sitting shakily astride a branch watching the panther coming up after me.

“Bugger!” I said. “I forgot panthers could climb trees!”

Naturally we can, it said. It settled on the branch opposite mine with one great paw hanging and its tail swinging. What are we doing up here? it asked. Hunting?

There was no doubt it was talking to me. Well, I thought, this was a dream. So I gave in to it and answered, “No. I’m supposed to be keeping watch in case anything supernatural attacks the Prince.”

The panther yawned. It was as if its head split open into a bright pink maw fringed with long, white fangs. Boring, it said. I hoped you might want to go hunting.

“Let’s do that in a bit,” I said. I was feeling weak with terror still. “I agree,” I said, hoping to persuade it to go away, “keeping watch is really boring. I may have to be here for hours.”

Oh, well, the panther said. It let down its three other huge paws, put its black chin on the branch and went to sleep.

After a while when I couldn’t look away from it in case it went for my throat, and another while when I didn’t dare move in case it woke up and went for my throat, I sort of got used to the fact that I was sitting in a tree facing a big, black, sleeping panther, and I began to look about. Carefully and slowly. Arnold had said “pick up your totem beast” and I supposed that this panther might be my totem beast, but I didn’t believe this, not really. As far as I knew, totem beasts were a part of a shamanistic magician’s mind, which meant they were not really real, and I could see the panther was as real as I was. Anyway, I wasn’t going to take a chance on it. I sat and turned my head very slowly.

I was looking out over the tops of trees, but that was only the ordinary part of wherever I was. Tilted away sideways from the wood was – well, it was a bit like a diagram in lights. The nearest part of the diagram was a low-key misty map of a town and, beyond that, was a sparkling, electric hugeness that seemed to be sea. Nearer to me, at the edge of the lines and blobs that made the town, I could see a striking, turquoise oval. It was like a lighted jewel and it had a blob of whiter light at each end of it and two more blobs in the middle of each side.

“Oh!” I said, out loud without thinking. “Their magic did work! Those blobs must be them – Arnold and Dave and his mates!”

The panther twitched and made a noise in its throat. I didn’t know if it was a growl, or a snore, or its way of agreeing with me, but I shut up at once. I went on staring without speaking. It was fascinating, that lighted diagram. Little bright sparkles moved inside the turquoise oval of the stadium, and one brighter one stood still quite near the middle. I wondered if that was the Prince. But it could have been one of the umpires. After a bit, I noticed moving smudges of light out in the sea that were probably ships, and one or two quicker ones moving in straight lines that I thought were aircraft, because some of them made lines across the town. They were all in the most beautiful colours. None of them struck me as dangerous. But then I wouldn’t have known what a threat to the Prince looked like if it came up and hit me.

Anyway, I was stuck in this tree until the panther decided to leave. So I simply sat and stared, and listened to the rustlings and birdcalls in the wood, and felt as peaceful as anyone could be stuck up a tree a yard away from a lethal black panther.

The panther suddenly woke up.

I flinched, but it wasn’t attending to me. Someone coming, it remarked, head up and all four paws on the branch again. Then, like a big slide of black oil, it went noiselessly slithering away down the tree.

My forehead got wet with relief. I listened, but I couldn’t hear a thing. So, rather cautiously, I let myself down from branch to branch, until I could see the panther crouched along one of the very lowest boughs below me. Below that, I could see bare, pine-needled ground stretching away to bushes. Another animal was walking across the pine needles, another big cat, only this one was a spotted one, with long legs and a small head. This cat was so full of muscles that it seemed almost to walk on tiptoe. Its ugly, spotted tail was lashing. So was the panther’s, only more elegantly. The cat looked up, past the panther, and straight at me. Its eyes were wide and green and most uncomfortably knowing. When it got near the tree, it simply sat down and went on staring, jeeringly.

Then a man came out of the bushes after it.

He’s a hunter, I thought. This was because of the way he walked, sort of light and tense and leaning forward ready for trouble, and because of the deep tan on his narrow face. But I couldn’t help noticing that he was dressed in the same kind of suede that Arnold and his pals were wearing, except that his leathers were so old and greasy and baggy that you could hardly see they were suede. Hunters can dress in leather too, I thought. But I wondered.

He came up beside the ugly spotted cat and put his hand on its head, between its round, tufted ears. Then he looked slowly up through the tree until he saw me. “Nick Mallory?” he said quietly.

I wanted to deny it. I wanted to say my name was really Nichothodes Koryfoides, which is true. But Nick Mallory was what I had chosen to be when Dad and I adopted one another. “Yes,” I said. I meant it to sound cautious and adult, but it came out weak and defiant and resentful.

“Then come down here,” said the man.

As soon as he said it, I was down, standing on the pine needles under the tree, only a couple of feet away from him and his cat. That close, I could tell he was some kind of magic user, and one of the strongest I’d ever come across, too. Magics fair sizzled off him, and he felt full of strange skills and strong craft and deep, deep knowledge. He knew how to bring me down from the tree with just a word. And he’d brought the panther down with me, I realised. The poor beast was busy abasing itself, crawling on its belly among the pine needles, and pressing itself against my leg as if I could help it, absolutely terrified of that spotted cat. The cat was studying it contemptuously.