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.
My greatest fear was that nothing would happen. But I knew I was doing something when a great cluster of transparent people sped out of the lines of cloud and hung in the air above me, attracted by the magic. I was afraid that Alicia or one of the other pages might notice them, but they didn’t. Toby distracted them all by sinking his teeth into Alicia’s hand as it gripped Grundo’s ear. All the pages crowded in to separate Toby from Alicia and Alicia from Grundo—but quietly, because you didn’t make a noise in front of the King. I was able to move to one side and continue unbinding.
The King was still sitting there. I don’t think he noticed the salamanders. He didn’t seem to see that the false Merlin’s nose was bleeding. The false Merlin wiped the blood carefully on a handkerchief and handed it to Sybil. “Blood for a summoning,” he said to her. “We’ve no salamanders. We want that Old Power here instead, quickly.” He went and stood with one foot on Nick’s back, in case Nick recovered and tried to get up, while Sybil waved the red-blotched hanky about and began chanting.
“I can’t think why they think they need any more magic here,” Grundo grunted, appearing by my shoulder with one ear bleeding. I always forget how good Grundo is at slithering out of scraps. But at that stage I was only two-thirds of the way through the Great Unbinding. I made frantic noddings and face twistings at him not to distract me. His mouth made an oh of quiet understanding. Then he ducked out of my sight, and several of the pages yelped almost at once.
Gratefully I went on to the last third of the unbinding. Slowly and carefully I undid nine twists and three knots. Then I was done, right on to the very last, which was to pull an imaginary straight unknotted string through my fingers, to show that it was now free of all tangles. I wished that had been all. But I had to go on to feed all my flower files to the vortex, while my head spun with it, and pages heaved and gasped to one side of me, and Sybil, out in the open, got on with her summoning, too.
I don’t know how long I took to feed everything into the vortex. On one level, it took no time at all, just a crazy unreeling of file after file, plant after dry, thorny plant rushing through my mind and speeding into the twisted clouds, while I said to each, “I hereby call you to raise the land.” On another level I could see myself reaching out and slowly pulling to myself layer after layer of different magics. Sometimes I paused to marvel at them. Songs and thoughts looked truly beautiful, all intricate, curled-up colors, but when I turned them round to look at the other side, they were quite drab, and some had oozing nastinesses. Time and eternity took my breath away, though I tried not to look too hard at the demons that rode with them.
And I remember being slightly astonished at all the beings waiting in the wood where Toby had promised to go. I recognized the kingly man in the red cloak. He was on horseback, surrounded by his knights and standard bearers. I knew he was the Count of Blest. But there were ladies with him that I didn’t know and large numbers of tall people who didn’t look quite as solid as the Count and his court. They all looked relieved when they saw me standing between two trees and called out to know if it was time. “Yes,” I said. “My cousin is not able to come, but it is time.” They started to move at once, while the trees around them tossed and surged.
I called good things and bad things, and things that were neither, birds, animals, growing things, and things that never changed. I called the sun. I called stars, moon, and planets. Last of all, I called the world, and Blest rolled toward me.
Everything seemed to come loose.
The wonder of it was that this only seemed to take seconds. When I finished, Sybil was still chanting, the false Merlin still had his foot on Nick’s back, and Grundo and Toby were still silently wrestling with Alicia and the other pages. Nobody seemed to notice what was happening.
What was happening was terrifying. Blest was rolling loose among the universes, shedding strips of magic like bandages unwinding from a mummy. I saw the islands we had crossed behind Helga dipping and spinning. One actually pitched sideways and sank. Another seemed to be melting, and nearly all of them had lost their clear, luminous colors. They were patchy, with brown clouds.
I saw London walk among his towers and carefully put his huge foot down on a house, crushing it to brick dust.
I saw a huge wave rise out of a sea on another world and rush across a land full of brown people in houses. There were no houses after that. In another world a vast being standing guard on the top of a green hill turned and looked doubtfully over his shoulder. He seemed to have lost his purpose. After a while he came down from his hill and walked across the plains to meet three other beings like him, who looked equally lost. I was sorry about that, because this was the world where we had accidentally arrived in that library, and they depended for their magics on these Guardians of the Four Quarters. When I looked at another world, I saw that all its magic had entered its railway lines, causing incredible confusion. And I turned to a world of giant canyons, just in time to see a glistening xanadu collapse into the caves beneath it, followed by half the rocky landscape in great plumes of dust. That horrified me because I had no idea if my parents were in there or not.
Here, in the Islands of Blest, lines of power were winking out, and from every river there was rising a slimy, shell-covered head. “Free!” they growled. “Loose at last!” and their waters began to rise. Manchester, in a red dress, was hurriedly building city walls. Things that had been buried under the Pennines for centuries were crawling out from under confining blocks of magic. Not all these things were evil, but all over the country, moors and forests were becoming strange and powerful as the layers of magic shredded away. And the sea was rising.
What have I done? I thought. What have I done?
The magic was still shredding. In my head the file Gorse: home and country continued to unreel into the vortex long after the others had gone. It made sense. The magic of the Islands of Blest had more layers than anywhere else. I watched the strips unwind, layer after layer, until I thought for a moment that I was looking at the bedrock of our country. It was a brown-green lumpy shape, right at the bottom of things. Then it stirred, stretched, and sat up. It shook loose hair back and smiled at me, and I recognized the lady who had taken away the virtue from the Inner Garden.
“I never knew you were alive before,” I said.
“Of course I am,” she said. “So is every land. Thank you. Now I can put things back as I want them.” She lay back, like someone settling into a really comfortable sofa, and began pulling bands and scarves of magic across herself, slowly and carefully, looking at each strip before she laid it on herself. Some she shook her head at and threw away, some she put aside to lay on later, and some she smiled at and gave special treatment to, like wrapping them round her shoulders or her head.
Perhaps I haven’t destroyed everything, then, I thought.
A tremendous roar came out of the east. It was like an answer.
I had never heard anything that remotely resembled that noise, but Nick tells me that he thought it was a jet plane, flying very low. He was half delirious at that stage, shaken with shudders of pain, and he says he thought he was back on Earth suddenly. But the roar came a second time, and he realized what it was. And where he was, which he says was not so good. Everyone turned to look to the east, even Sybil, but no one could see anything for the huge bank of mist rolling up from there.
The dragon came flying above the mist, against the blue sky. He was white as chalk and touched gold from the sinking sun. He was enormous. The King stood up, which was fitting, although everyone else half crouched, except for the false Merlin, who stared up at the dragon, dumb-founded. The Archbishops fell to their knees and prayed, as did quite a few of the priests in the crowd.
The dragon came flying on, and he was even more enormous. When he was about half a mile away, his huge cry came again. There were words in it, but they were too loud to understand. Nick raised his head and shouted back, “This one! The one standing on me!”
“AH!” said the dra
gon. Everyone clearly saw the flame flicker in its huge mouth.
Then it was there. It cut through the vortex as if that did not exist, and hundreds of transparent folk sped away outward, frantic to get out of its way. For a moment it was like being under a great ivory-colored tent. The dragon’s wings were so huge that they covered Stonehenge in one direction and all the cars and buses of the Court in the other.
A shining white claw came down from the ivory hugeness—it shone like marble, but you could see it was hard as granite—and hooked itself around the false Merlin. He screamed, a high, childlike scream, as he was snatched away upward. The gigantic wings beat with a dull boom, like thunder, or strong wind in a tent, pulling the mist in across us. It started to snow then, in lines that twisted with the vortex, filling everyone’s hair with furry whiteness, but I honestly think nobody really noticed. We were all staring up at the dragon as he rose, huge and white and perfect, dangling the tiny dark figure of the false Merlin in one clawed front foot.
He circled with his prey, round against the sun, until he was far out over the plain, to the west. Then he dropped the false Merlin. Most of us watched the little dark shape hurtle downward. Most of us strained to hear the noise of that shape hitting the ground, but there was no sound. It was too far away.
But Sir James strode through the whirling snow and came up to Sybil beside the two Archbishops. He didn’t bother with them, nor with the King and Prince Edmund, who were both standing by Sybil. He said to Sybil, “Much better. Now there’s only two of us to share everything. Let’s get this sacrifice over, shall we? Shall I kill him, or do you still insist on your ritual?”
Now the false Merlin was gone, Sybil seemed much more herself. She drew herself up. “My ritual—” she began. She stopped, looking irritable, and moved aside.