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.
“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.