Deep Secret (Magids 1) - Page 79

“Not that we can see,” Will said.

“Well, I don’t know. I didn’t dare look,” Nick said. “I remembered those stories – that man who went to hell to get that girl – you know – and I thought I heard her behind me, but I didn’t dare look, in case, in case…”

“That was well done too,” I said quickly. “We may even be missing a verse about it. I’m sure she’ll be along.”

“Could I go to bed now?” Nick said. “I’m so tired.”

“Of course,” we said, and we bundled him over to my bed. I swear he was asleep before we got him there. He was a big lad and very heavy. It was difficult to get him on to the bed, even with two of us, and he lay like a log once we got him there.

“What do you make of that?” Will murmured.

“Typical Maree,” I said. “Not typical Nick, though. I didn’t know he had it in him.”

“Just what I thought,” Will said. “You’d think with a mother like his – well…” He saw me vainly staring out into the increasingly nebulous landscape. Daylight was strengthening all the time. I hoped that accounted for the grey pallor out there, but I very much feared that the road was now fading. “She’ll be along,” Will said. “He asked right and he didn’t look behind, even though he heard her. “He heard her, Rupe. And it was clever of him not to look. I shouldn’t wonder if you’re right and Si or someone hasn’t got another verse about that, or some Magid we don’t know. And it’s a long way and she’s small. Short legs. She’ll turn up. Why don’t you go and find us both more coffee? I’ll stay and keep the candles going. I’ve got really good at keeping them down to just a spark.”

Bless Will. A fine piece of bluster that was. He could see I could hardly bear to be in the room just then. I was sure Nick had been lying. I could see Will thought so too. Lying not about what Maree had asked for – that rang true – but about what he himself had asked for. I couldn’t see Nick sacrificing something he really wanted, not even for Maree, not in a month of Sundays. I tried to smile at Will as I made for the door, but it felt more like bared teeth. I said, almost normally, “Coffee. Yes. And while I’m down there, I’d better put Stan in the picture and talk to Dakros. I’ll be about half an hour. All right?”

Then I broke and ran. I ran until I got to the stairs. A lift was too confining. I went down the stairs slowly, a pause from step to step, Rob gone, Maree missing, each step those words. My head pounded. My mouth felt vile. Coffee was essential. Rob gone, Maree missing, down and down. Otherwise I didn’t think much, except to be surprised when I got to the part of the stairs where the party had been, to find so little trace of it: just a litter of tinsel, a cigarette end or so and a smell of body and stale drink that reminded me of the inside of my head. Rob gone, Maree missing…

I decided I needed fresh air at once. Even before coffee.

I pushed through the fire door, which thumped out Rob gone, Maree missing, into a smell of polish and the muted sound of the place being cleaned. Business as usual. Hotels are marvellous places. The end of the world is coming and breakfast is served from eight to ten. I could smell toast distantly and it made me want to gag. The only thing to do was to cut out through the foyer, avoiding all smell of food, and go round to the car park from there. Instead of turning towards the dining room, I hurried down the steps towards the big glass doors.

Gram White, robed and carrying a staff, was waiting for me in the middle of the foyer.

It was another of those occasions when time stretched. I know my first thought was an ignoble inner cry of Oh, not before breakfast! which told me, even as I made it, that I had been caught in a summoning from the moment I decided on fresh air. R. Venables does it again! I also had time to look round the calm, palm-decorated space of the foyer and to notice, in the overhead mirrors, that besides the robed and foreshortened figure of White in the centre I could see the foreign receptionist, Odile, at work behind the desk. On Sunday! They exploited her. But that told me that whatever White intended, it was something quick and hard for the uninitiated to see. Something he was well in practice with. That told me what.

I don’t think I paused. I went down those stairs and towards him in a rush.

That threw him. He tried to open the gate as I came, but I was now going so fast that he was too late. I caught his gate as it spread and dragged upon its edges with both hands. He yelled with contemptuous fury and tried to force it open again. Fire thundered up between us, smoking the overhead mirrors black. I had been right. He had opened it into the heart of a volcano again. We hung there together for endless seconds, burning and equally balanced.

Meanwhile the node went mad around us.

As I fought the triple fight, trying to get that opening elsewhere closed, trying not to fry, trying to get the upper hand of White, I had sideways helter-skelter sights of the foyer whirling round us like a merry-go-round, potted palms, glass doors, the desk with Odile crouching behind it too scared even to scream, going around and around in a crazy vortex. But mostly I was simply conscious of White and his heavy pale eyes and his pouchy, bearded face, working away in front of me with flourishes of his staff, full of hate and contempt. He hated the whole Magid kind, that was clear. But it was also clear he hated me, personally, with particularity, not just for getting in his way, but physically too, for being myself. And I hated him the same way. I felt pure contempt for his melodramatic hands-off magic with the staff and the stupid robe.

I was also angry, angrier than I have ever been in my life. This pernicious man, with his mad ambitions, had probably destroyed Maree. He had tried to shoot a centaur who was his own child. He had killed three unoffending children and tried to kill Rob. I wanted to destroy him. I wished, with frustration enough to scream at it, that a Magid was allowed to destroy. And he had no such prohibitions. He drew back in the whirling foyer and lashed through me with his staff a blast of noxiousness. It was intended to give me cancer. I rinsed it aside. As I did so, I recognised it as another thing he had done not long ago. And I thought, You did this to Derek Mallory too, didn’t you? And my anger was like sheets of flame.

I thundered a whip-crack of pain at him, truly savage pain – at least that was allowed – and when he yelped, winced and staggered, I followed it up with extreme stasis.

Everything stopped, slightly skewed from where it had been, with Gram White frozen and leaning to one side in the centre. I should have done this straight away, I thought. My stasis had stilled the node, but the gate was still open as a writhing smoky slit. I closed it, and sealed it firmly. I cleansed the overhead glass. I restored the melted marble paving by my feet. One of the potted palms had fallen over. I put it upright. Then I turned to Odile, who had been caught in the stasis too. I released her and she stirred and looked at me as if she was sure I was mad.

“Bear with me,” I said. “I have to lay a geas on this man. Then it will be over.”

“You must take your complaint to the Manager,” she replied.

I gave up on her. “In due course,” I said. The trouble with a geas is that it has to be laid aloud, in the hearing of the recipient. Gram White was not likely to stand around for me to do it any other time or place, except here, right in front of Odile. Ah well. Wondering what Odile was going to make of this, I retreated to the steps as a vantage point and broke the stasis on White sufficiently for him to be able to stand upright and listen to what I said. I said:

“Gram White, I hereby lay geas upon you, that you may not now or ever use magic of any kind on any being or thing, alive or dead, inanimate, disembodied or between states. From now onwards, the use and practice of magic will be as far from you as the sun is from this world, and any approach to it will be your instant death. Furthermore, if you invoke or use the magic or other powers of your goddess of the bush, or of any other deity, the geas will be your instant death. And by reason of your abuse of the powers you have had at your disposal, this geas is now laid upon you, to abide by, on pain of instant death.”

Having said this, I released the stasis completely. White looked up at me in total hatred. “You do think you’re clever, don’t you?” he said, and turned and went out through the glass doors.

Someone behind me said laughingly, “That sounded very impressive!”

The landing above the stairs seemed to be full of people, probably all on their way to breakfast. There was Wendy, raising fat hands in silent clapping motions, Kornelius with

her, grinning feverishly at what he had overheard; and Tansy-Ann Fisk, looking compassionately at me. She was no doubt forgiving me for being in the grip of a grey psychic blanket. Behind her was a scared-looking Tina Gianetti and her besuited boyfriend, who obviously thought it was all just some more nonsense, and beyond these were Rick Corrie and Maxim Hough, both of whom had the air of hoping that what I had just said was not going to cause trouble for the committee. There were also numerous other people I didn’t know by name. One of these asked me, “Are we talking Magicians’ Battle here? Are you going to do it for the Swords and Sorcery tonight?”

“That was the idea,” I said weakly, “but I’m not sure Gram White wants to cooperate.”

Tags: Diana Wynne Jones Magids Fantasy
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