I hated the next bit. I had to go crunching down those pebbles and help wrap the sheet round the Prayermaster. It was horrible, even tho
ugh I tried not to look. Banana was sort of coming back up my nose before long, and I had to go and sit on the grass.
Maxwell Hyde came up to join me. “My idea,” he said, “was to sling this fellow—and the murder weapons—further along this coast, so they’ll end up in the world the beach really belongs to. A nasty puzzle for the people there, I’m afraid, but it won’t be nearly as much bad luck for them as it will be for Romanov if we leave everything here. A murdered corpse always brings vile bad luck on the spot where it happened. Trouble is, Romanov can’t remember where he got this section from. I’ll have to think a bit.”
I nodded and swallowed, and after a bit I began to feel better. I looked round at Maxwell Hyde, sitting upright, with his thin, businesslike hands clasped round his damp tweed knee, intending to ask how his thinking was getting on. He looked round at me at the same moment.
“No,” he said. “Doesn’t add up. I told you to help three people on the way. Your story only has two, even if you count the elephant as a person and the second one as the old chap with the tapestry. Or do you count the Prayermaster, too?”
I could feel my face slowly going as fiery as the middle of the vanished kitchen range. I said, “Well, it may have been him.”
His look got twice as keen. I could feel it on the side of my face. “Come clean,” he said. “What was the third?”
“Er,” I said. “There was this girl—but maybe it isn’t, because I haven’t helped her yet. Arianrhod, but she said to call her Roddy. She was in some place called Blest, you see, and I said I’d go there after I’d seen Romanov.”
There was silence. All I could hear were several different kinds of sea breeze hitting the trees. I thought it was ominous.
“Well!” said Maxwell Hyde. “Well, I’m blessed! No pun intended. Fair, was she, or dark?”
“Dark,” I said. “About my age.”
“Well,” he said again. “I was about to point out to you, my lad, that you seem to have unfinished business, but this clinches it, I think. What did my granddaughter ask you to do?”
“Your granddaughter!” I yelped.
He nodded. “Has to be. Unusual name, magical heritage, prefers to be called Roddy, lives in Blest. My eldest granddaughter. QED.”
“You mean”—I gulped—“that you’re from this place, too?”
“That’s right.” He chuckled, quite suddenly.
“But how come—” I began.
“How come I publish mystery stories on Earth?” he said. “I publish on Thule, Tellans, lots of places, too. Everyone in those places is apt to go on about how convincing my alternate world setting is, but of course it’s only Blest. Quite ordinary to me—and to Blest people, worse luck. I hardly sell at all in Blest. Sales so bad, in fact, that I thought I’d make use of my Magid skills to turn a penny or so in other worlds. What did she want—Roddy?”
He had this way of spearing you with the last little thing he said. I wriggled a bit and said, “There’s this plot. The Merlin seems to be in it, and she wanted outside help.”
Maxwell Hyde narrowed his eyes. It was as if he was looking at this Merlin fellow from a long way off. He shook his head. “She’s wrong, of course. She has this little way of getting wrought up, our Roddy. The Merlin’s young yet, but he’s a deep one. They all are. Maybe up to something Roddy got the wrong end of the stick about. Bound to be. She’s only a child. Right. I’ll speak to your father,” he said, getting up. “Let’s get this Prayermaster seen to, then.”
“What do you mean,” I said, getting up slowly, “speak to Dad?”
He turned round on his way down the slope. “Well, he’s obviously got to see that you’re in one piece before I carry you off to Blest, hasn’t he?”
I stared at him. He looked up at me seriously.
“Look,” he said, “you’ve not only got unfinished business, lad. You’ve also managed to do something I can only do with difficulty, when drunk. Plus you’ve had conversations with animals and held off a Prayermaster when he tried to put you under the prayer. Not things most people can do. I consider it my duty, before you try something that kills you or harms your world, to take you home to Blest with me and give you a little basic training. Right?”
“Does the Upper Room want you to?” I asked eagerly.
“Huh!” He went crunching off down the pebbles, talking over his shoulder. “Magids have a free hand mostly in what they do. We do what needs doing. Come along now.”
8
RODDY
ONE
It was very hot. Grundo and I sat in the shade of the castle gate, drearily discussing what to do. Even if we could get to Liverpool or Southampton or Newcastle, we didn’t know which, and we had almost no money.