The Merlin Conspiracy Read online

  More of the knowledge from the woman with the smashed hip came to me and helped me while I was gagging. My grandfather was not a wizard. He was a Great Power, and great ones are governed by strange rules. Power and pain go together, as the woman had learned herself. And every fine, kindly thing is incomplete without a side that is less than pleasant.

  “Fine, kindly thing!” I said aloud. “Grandfather Gwyn is fine all right, but kindly?” At that moment I thought I never wanted to speak to my grandfather again.

  Then I came to myself to see that the garden was filling with the white mist of dawn. Sir James was coming striding down the side of the mound, holding a bottle and a wineglass. The other two followed him, sipping out of glasses as they came. None of them seemed to see the hideous standard rearing up by their shoulders, but they saw the lawn by the gate well enough. The dew of the grass there was smudged green and trampled brown with footprints, hoofmarks, and the shapes of huge three-clawed paws.

  They rushed there and stared. After a moment they actually danced with delight. “We’ve real power to draw on now!” I heard Sybil say.

  The Merlin positively giggled. “Yes, and we can use it to lay in even more!” he said.

  I was disgusted again, and I left....

  THREE

  I woke up in bed. It was bright morning, and I was really worried. If Sybil and her friends could enslave Grandfather Gwyn, there seemed no reason why they should ever stop. No one and nothing was safe. I tried to convince myself I had merely had a peculiar dream, but I couldn’t. I was sure it had all really happened.

  To prove me right, there were only Grundo and me at breakfast and only two places set. “Isn’t my grandfather here?” I asked Olwen when she came in with boiled eggs.

  “He’s away on business,” she said, “riding the mare.”

  “So much for your idea of asking Grandfather Gwyn for help,” I said glumly to Grundo when Olwen had gone.

  “Well, he said he wouldn’t be able to,” Grundo answered, placidly tapping the tops of three eggs. “What’s the matter? Why are you looking so desperate?”

  I told him about what I thought had happened in the night. It can’t have been pleasant for Grundo, hearing such things about his mother. He looked depressed. But he is used to Sybil. He ate his third egg in a resigned way and said, “There must be someone else you can ask for help. That’s why he sent you to get all that knowledge. Think about it.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I will.” I sat watching him eat toast while I tried to open file after file in my head. Teasel, Thistle, Ivy, Gorse, Bramble, Dog Rose, Goose Grass I went through, and several other prickly or dour-looking plants that I didn’t know the names of and only had pictures of in my head. It was odd. I knew each flower file was crammed full of magical facts. I even knew roughly what was in each one, but it all stayed misty to me. Even the one I had used last night without realizing what I was using—Red Artemis: out-of-body experiences—had gone misty to me now.

  In the end I just ran through the scores of file headings one by one, until one appeared that didn’t stay misty. Harebells: dealings with magical folk who are visible. And a whole list of these magical folk: dragons, Great Powers, gods, Little People, kelpies, boggarts, haunts, elves, piskies … on and on. I hadn’t realized there were so many. And there was, I realized, another whole file—Mullein—about dealing with magical folk who were not visible, which put itself alongside Harebells in case I needed that, too. But the picture of a harebell was the one that was clearest in my mind’s eye. For a moment I distrusted it. It didn’t seem as dry and thorny as the rest of the hurt woman’s herbs. But though the pale blue bells of the flowers seemed almost juicy, I saw they grew on dry, wiry stems, as dry as anything in the other files. It seemed to be right. What we needed was one of the magical folk who could give us advice—someone wise.

  I ran through the list of folk again. I expected the file to come up with dragon or god, but it didn’t, and when I thought about it, I realized that someone big like that would make an enormous magical disturbance coming to talk to us. If Sybil didn’t notice, the Merlin would. Realizing that made me feel almost hopeful, in a way. None of the three conspirators had the least idea that Grundo and I knew they were up to something, and we needed to keep them from knowing until we knew enough to stop them. The list ran through my head and stopped. Little People. It was obvious, really.

  Grundo put the last piece of toast regretfully back in the toast rack. “Got it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Where do harebells grow?”

  “There were lots in that ruined village,” Grundo said, “but that’s miles away. Wasn’t there a sort of bank of them on that slope across the valley? I thought I saw some just before we saw your grandfather waiting for us.”

  “Let’s go and see!” I said, leaping up. I was so pleased that I rushed out to the kitchen with the teapot and a pile of plates. Olwen looked very surprised. “We’ll be back for lunch,” I told her, and went racing off after Grundo, who was already trotting out along the way we had taken yesterday.

  But things are never that easy. There were only a few harebells growing by the head of the valley, and I knew I needed thick drifts of them. It took us half the morning to find the right kind of sloping, sheltered hilltop where harebells grew in quantities. By that time we were well into the hills on the chapel side of the manse. But at last we found the place, a small, warm dip full of a great bank of fluttering, pale blue bells. We sat down on the sunny edge of them, and I carefully picked five of the harebells and wound their wiry stems among the fingers of my left hand in the correct pattern. Then I called out the correct words from the file, three times.

  And waited.

  Our shadows had moved on the hillside over the dry grass quite noticeably before anything happened. Grundo had stretched out on the turf and then gone to sleep by that time. This was hard on him, because when a section of the harebell-covered hillside shifted gently to one side, he woke up with a jump and then didn’t dare move. I could see him staring sideways across the freckles on his nose all through the rest of what happened.

  As I said, a piece of the hillside shifted. It was as if there had been an invisible fold in it up to then, which now straightened out to let a small person slip around the edge of it. The person had one hand up, pushing at the fold, and he was dreadfully out of breath.

  “Your pardon, wise lady,” he panted. His voice was husky and high. “You patient. Wait long.”

  I looked from him to the hillside. Space is as a folding screen to the Little People, said the knowledge in my head, and it seemed to be right. There was obviously twice as much of the hill, folded to keep the place where the person lived out of sight. I tried not to stare at the fold, or at the person, too hard. If I had been standing up, he would have come about to my knees. Up to then I had always thought that apart from their size, the Little People would be like small humans. This was not so. He was covered with soft, sandy hair, which grew thicker on his head and around his pointy ears. Being so hairy probably accounted for the fact that he was wearing almost no clothes, just crossed belts on his long top half and cheerful red drawers on his lower part. I found it really hard not to stare at his legs. They bent the other way from human legs. But his hands and arms were very like mine, though hairy, and he had an anxious little face rather like a cat’s, except that his eyes were brown. He wore a gold earring in one ear and kept flicking at it nervously. I expect I seemed horribly huge to him.

  I didn’t want him to think I had come just to stare. I greeted him politely in what the file said were the right words.

  “You know old talk,” he said respectfully. “Not necessary. Old talk hard for us these days. You wait, for they fetch me. I only one know speak your talk.”

  I looked at the harebells drooping from my fingers. “These are supposed to make me able to understand your language,” I told him. “Why don’t you just speak the way you usually do?”

  He was very put out. “But
I need learn! Practice,” he protested. “I hear, I know more than I know to say. Please use own talk.”

  “All right,” I said. It seemed unkind to say anything else. “I’ve come to you for advice, really. Do you mind me asking you for help? Will you need anything in return?”

  “No, no. No return. Just need to hear big person talk,” he said, and hopped forward to sort of squat-sit in front of me on his wrong-way-bending legs. This put him so nearly out of Grundo’s line of sight that Grundo had to roll both his eyes into the corners in order to see him. “Now you tell,” the small person said, and clasped his nearly human-shaped hands over his wrong-shaped knees. His smell drifted over me, like the smell of a very clean cat. “Make long story. Speak slow. I hear and learn.” He looked up at me, expectant and eager.

  There is nothing that puts you off more, I find, than someone saying that. I explained very badly at first and kept thinking that I’d better put it more simply, and then thinking, No, he wants to learn more words. I said most things twice in the end. And he kept nodding and staring at me brightly, and I thought despondently, I bet he hasn’t understood a word!

  But he had. When I finally faltered to a finish, he flicked his earring and looked sober. “Is bad thing,” he said gravely, “they trap one so great as Gwyn. Strangeness is, they do without know who they got. Is using his another name maybe. The Strong all have names a lot. Stupids. Learn name from book and not know who meaning. And is most greatly bad that such stupids work great plot. A pause. I think.”

  With his furry elbows on his peculiar knees, he rested his chinless face in both hands and considered. I waited anxiously. Grundo seized the chance to roll his eyes back straight.

  After a while the Little Person remarked out of his musings, “Wise ones of my folk been say magics acting up. This why.”

  “And do they know—” I began.

  He held up his hand to stop me, sandy pink palm forward. “Still pause. I still think.”

  We waited. At length he seemed to finish thinking. He took his face out of his hands and looked up at me, bright and whiskery. “I think two things you do. One not may work. Other fiercely danger.”

  “Please tell me anyway,” I said.

  He nodded. “Am do. But all mix together difficult. Like magics mix here in Blest. Blest magics all laid together close, over and under, like weaving. These stupids pull out threads. Come could unravel, and that bad. If you do thing also in Blest, that might worse be nearly. You do first either thing, you do outside, that right. That secret. Or either yourself do thing so big it chance unravel, fierce also danger. You see? I know you understand.”

  I didn’t. I had to think hard to get even some of this. “You’re saying that magic is so interlaced here in Blest, right?” I asked. “That if I want to do it safely and secretly, I have to do something right outside this world? Or if I don’t mind them knowing, I can do something so booming big here that it could untwist all the magics anyway?”

  He seemed very pleased. “Booming big,” he said, several times. “Word I like.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But what things?”

  He was surprised. “Why, head of yours full of old knowings! Why need ask? I humble new person. But I tell. Outside thing, you call on person walk dark paths. Paths outside all worlds. No one here know you do. But not may work. Blest thing, booming big thing, you raise the land. Violent dangerous. Maybe blow apart—blow in small mess bits—blow—what call?” He made rocking movements with one hand. “What call?” he repeated appealingly.

  I had no idea what he meant this time. “Sway? Wave? Rock?” I suggested.

  “Balance!” Grundo said deeply, unable to bear any more. “He means the balance of magic, you fool!”

  The small person leaped wildly to one side, just like a grasshopper, he was so startled. “Man not dead!” he said feelingly. “He safe? Not. I think I go now.”

  “No, no, it’s only Grundo. Please stay!” I said.

  “Talk he growl like deep earth,” said the small one. “Booming strong magic. I go.”

  And to my great disappointment he went. He flipped aside a fold in the harebell patch, slipped around it, and vanished. “What did you have to interrupt for?” I said to Grundo.

  He sat up and rolled his eyes to get the kinks out of them. “Because you were being stupid,” he said. “He was trying to tell you that raising the land—whatever that is—is going to destroy the whole balance of magic here and probably in most other worlds as well. That’s why he was so anxious to make you understand. I think he meant only do that if the outside-path magic doesn’t work. Whatever that is.”

  “Then we’ll do the other thing— Oh, I wish you hadn’t frightened him off!” I wailed.

  “He’d told you what he thought anyway,” Grundo said.

  “Yes, but he wanted to practice his human language,” I said. “You must admit he needed to. He’d have stayed for hours if only you’d kept quiet.”

  “Then we’d have missed lunch,” said Grundo. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Always thinking about food! I thought. “Don’t you even feel how marvelous it is to have talked to one of the Little People?” I said.

  “No, not as the main thing,” Grundo grunted. “If you think like that, then you’re treating him like something in a museum, not as a person. And I’m going back for lunch. Now.”

  Do you know, Grundo is right! I was thinking of the small person that way. Even though he gave us some excellent, if terrifying, advice, I still had to try hard as I followed Grundo across the hillsides not to think of the Little Person as something very rare and strange that I had been to stare and marvel at. I think it would have been easier to see him as a real person if he’d agreed to speak his own language.

  FOUR

  We tried to call help from the dark paths that afternoon. We sat in the grass above the manse while I called up the flower files and thought through them to find the knowledge I needed. I knew it was there somewhere, but I was quite surprised to find it under Mullein as a branch of speaking with the dead. I suppose that put me in a bad mood. I hoped, very strongly, that the person I found to help would not be dead. That would be no help at all.

  Then I was put out again, when I looked in the right branch of the file, to discover that the file names were not simply names of flowers, but quite often the plant you needed for most of the workings in the file. This ought to have been obvious from Harebells this morning, but I didn’t see it until that afternoon. It took practice to get used to the hurt lady’s knowledge.

  A torch of mullein held in the hand is necessary for all the dark paths, this branch said. And could we find mullein? We could not. I got more and more impatient, and underneath I was just so anxious because while we searched about on the hillside and round the manse, Sybil and her friends were getting merrily on with their plans. We could be too late. I had only the haziest idea what mullein looked like anyway. Grundo knew. He had looked at the pictures in nature study lessons because of not being able to read as well as me. He said he thought it looked a bit like evening primrose. But when he added that any old plant would probably do just as well, we very nearly quarreled.

  “Or try waving a turnip!” Grundo called over his shoulder. He went stumping off in disgust down to the chapel.

  I ignored him and found rosemary and privet and ragged robin. Privet and ragged robin were two of those plants that my files had tagged as Use only with great care, along with briony, campion, hellebore, and lily of the valley. I was looking at them nervously, wondering what made them so dangerous, when Grundo came stumping back.

  “There’s a fuzzy plant covered with caterpillars against the back wall of the chapel,” he said. “Come and look. I think it may be mullein.”

  It was, too. I knew as soon as I looked at it. It had pale, furry leaves and pale yellow flowers in clusters all down its stem, and as well as being covered in caterpillars, it was tall as a hollyhock. Grundo knocked the caterpillars off and handed me the flower with a
Court bow. “There. Have you got them all?”

  “I need dock,” I said.

  “By the chapel gate,” he said. “A big bundle of it. And then?”

  “Well, asphodel and periwinkle would help, too, but I’ve got all the main ones,” I said. “Let’s go to the top of the hill. I need to face clear sky.”

  All the way up the hill I could tell Grundo was brooding. When we got to the top, he said, “If doing this magic makes you like Alicia all the time, I’m not going to help you anymore.” He sat himself down facing toward the manse and humped his shoulders at me.

  In the normal way I’d have been furious with him for even thinking I was like Alicia, but my head was so full of what I had to do that all I said was “Be like that, then!” and left him sitting there.

  Oddly, as soon as I started the working, it was almost as if Grundo was not with me. There came a tremendous burst of energy from the bundle of plants in my fist, and from that moment on I seemed to be alone on the top of the mountain, walled off from the world. This made me less embarrassed than I would have been if Grundo had been standing beside me. The spell was a rhyming one. The files told me what to say in the hurt woman’s language, and then they told me what the words meant. I had to put the words into thoughts and then into more words that rhymed. I felt really silly, waving a withering bundle of plants about and calling out, “Feet on the stony way, eyes that can’t see, wizard man outside the worlds, come and help me!” Over and over. It felt pathetic. And futile.

  I was quite sure it wasn’t working until I saw a dark space open in front of me. It felt like a window into emptiness at first. “Help me,” I finished feebly. I nearly staggered away backward when the darkness flickered blue, showing rocks and wetness, and someone came stumbling from around a corner toward me.