Deep Secret (Magids 1) - Page 70

You can be back by candle-light.”

Nothing could have been less nimble and light than Maree’s faltering feet. It seemed an age before the two of them came into view again in the dark distance, going slowly up the next looping incline in the dim grey road, a large dark figure and a small bleached one, the large figure most gently and solicitously helping the small one along.

“W

hew!” said Will, sucking his sore fingers. “How come,” he asked Rob, “you know that last verse too?”

“It’s a nursery rhyme,” said Rob. “Everyone on Thalangia knows those two verses.”

“But you are mage trained, aren’t you?” Will said.

“Yes,” Rob admitted.

He would have to be, I thought, for Knarros to have sent him here. And I was very glad that we on Earth only know just the one verse. Nick would have been far less willing to go.

Rupert Venables continued

I took the wheelchair over to the awkward space by the door and sat in it while I concentrated, first on keeping that road established and in sight, and then on slowing the candle flames into eighteen small twinkling flamelets. After that, I checked the node – it was still undisturbed – and Will’s warding, which was in place like rock around us. It all took a while. Nick and Maree had traversed the next slope, and become too small to see in the dimness out there, before I felt I could release any of my attention from it. When I did, I found that Will had established himself in the frilly chair we had pushed against the bathroom door, and the quack chicks had gone to roost under it. Rob was very studiously asleep.

“Rob,” I said “Rob!”

He woke up artistically. “Yes?”

“Rob,” I said, “there are one or two things I couldn’t talk to you about with Nick here. First, I’m afraid that your Uncle Knarros is dead—”

I had to stop there. Rob cried. He cried like the centaur Kris had cried, tears swelling from his eyes and pouring down over his brown cheeks and shapely mouth, while he stared piteously from Will to me. He seemed unable to speak for some time. We did not like to interrupt his grief. At last he shakily wiped his face with his hands and managed to say, “How?”

“Someone shot him with an Earth-style gun,” I said. “I’m sorry. I should have prevented it, but I was stupid. I had no idea what was going on.” I felt terrible, because Rob had so clearly loved that old granite statue of a centaur. And I had not seen, even though I had realised that the youngsters at the gate had not been waiting for me, that Knarros was deep into double-cross and danger. I had bungled everything I put my hand to lately, from the trial of Timotheo onwards, and it took the tears of a centaur to make me see it.

“How old are you, Rob?” Will asked kindly.

“Eighteen,” Rob said, on a deep groaning sob.

That was old enough for Rob to find a life of his own, I thought, so long as his outlook had not been permanently narrowed by his austere upbringing in that colony.

“And you did say you had other family to go to?” Will asked.

Rob nodded. Rob took to Will, I could see. Will was the rough, but subtle and kindly, countryman type that centaurs most appreciated. “My mother’s still alive,” Rob said, with another sob. “But – but she’s never been well since she had me.”

I could see he felt guilty about this. I sighed, both because the guilt was so pointless and because I saw I was going to have to be the hard man of this interview. I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could Will said, “And your father, Rob? Is he still alive?”

Rob’s chin came up. His hand went to that gold medallion of his and his still tear-filled eyes stared proudly into Will’s earnest ones. “My father is dead,” he said. “He was the Emperor.”

That confounded me. I had been thinking along quite other lines and this threw all my ideas about. Will looked as confused as I felt. “Then,” Will said rather feebly, “your mother and Knarros must be from a very good family.”

“From the highest bloodlines,” Rob agreed proudly.

We sat and stared at this hurt and desolate centaur prince for a moment. Then I said, “Rob, there are some other things connected with your uncle’s death that I think you ought to—”

There was a strong thumping from behind me, from outside my door. Whoever it was could not get through Will’s warding and was not able to knock on the door. They seemed to be pounding on the carpeted floor of the corridor instead. Presently there were shouts, muffled and distant at first, then stronger and clearer as the man outside discovered how to project his voice through the layers of protection.

“Venables, Venables! Venables, do you hear me?”

The fact that I could hear him was alarming. He seemed to have done it by sliding his voice through Will’s working and latching on to my own, more normal, warding beneath. That took great skill and a lot of power. My first thought was to pretend I hadn’t heard. One often only knows that a magic has worked when people react to it. I looked at Will, and then at Rob, to warn them to keep quiet. And it was clear Rob had recognised the voice. His head was up. He looked as if he was about to shout back, then thought better of it.

“Venables!” It was a strong yell.

“Who is it?” Will asked Rob, genuinely not knowing.

Tags: Diana Wynne Jones Magids Fantasy
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