Maree looked up at her, and pushed at her glasses. All the expression went out of her face. “I went,” she said, in a calm and level voice, “to Babylon. And don’t think you can try anything like that with me again.”
“All right,” Janine said. “There are other ways. And don’t you think you can spoil Nick’s chances, because I’m not going to let you.”
“I never did want to spoil his chances,” Maree said. “I just want to make sure that you don’t.”
While Will and I stared, frankly appalled by how naked it was between them, Janine turned away from Maree, smiling sweetly, and said to Nick, “Come along, dear. Mother wants you sitting beside her for once. It’s your father’s finest hour and we don’t want to let him down, do we?”
“In a moment,” Nick said placidly. “I just need to finish asking Rupert about my computer games first.”
Janine’s eyes passed across me like a scythe. “Then don’t be long, dear,” she said and walked gracefully away to the front row on the other side of the aisle, with the little beads chittering on her shoulder as she went.
Nick leant to me across Maree. “You did look at the games, didn’t you?” I nodded. They had been prominent in the files I had cleansed that morning. “Then talk about them,” Nick said. “Spin it out.”
“Well, actually, they do have possibilities,” I began. “What I liked about the Bristolia game…”
Here Maxim Hough, followed by Ted Mallory, climbed on to the platform in front of us. The Viking song, which had been beginning to irritate me, died away and everyone clapped. Nick sank back in his chair, exuding satisfaction. He had avoided Janine and he knew I would not have praised his game unless I meant it. He caught Ted Mallory’s eye and they grinned at one another.
Ted Mallory was looking jovial and composed. I would not have believed he was as nervous as Maree said he was. But I saw his eyes search for Maree. Maree leant earnestly forward in her seat until her uncle saw her. She gave a slight nod as his eyes found her. Mallory seemed to sigh with relief. He smiled at Maree and shuffled composedly at the papers in front of him. All was now well.
And all seemed well still while Maxim Hough pushed his blond Egyptian hairstyle behind his ears, coughed into the microphone and introduced the Guest of Honour, “…who needs no introduction from me as the best living writer of serious comic horror…”
All seemed well, but I could sense growing hostile magic. It was coming in cold waves, stronger and stronger, and each wave seemed to lap round me, squeezing at my heart, compressing my lungs and turning my kidneys to blocks of ice. It was so powerful, and its aim was so astutely disguised that, for a minute or so, I actually wondered if I was being egotistical in thinking it was aimed chiefly at me. By this time I was having a struggle to breathe. I glanced at Will and found him giving me a glare of concern. No, I was not being egotistical then: it was aimed at me.
I pushed it back sharply and began to wish that Zinka would hurry up and get here. This was strong. The sending, or whatever, was being done by that block of folk in hooded robes. Now I looked, I could see them swaying gently to it. But they were using power that had unwittingly been built up by the guys in armour – at least, I hoped it was unwitting. Damn it! The whole thing was orchestrated! I looked searchingly that way. Gram White was leaning smugly against the far door beyond the cowled figures. He saw me look. As Ted Mallory stood up to speak, White
blandly spread both hands out, empty. Look, no hands. He had simply organised a good hundred people to do his dirty work for him.
I fear I heard little of what Ted Mallory said. I was struggling with more and stronger cold waves and thinking, But White can’t be doing this! The terms of the geas would mean he was dead if he even organised something like this! What’s going on? I vaguely heard Mallory starting with his favourite premise that writing a book was “just a job like any other job”, at which Maree sighed sharply and clicked her teeth in annoyance, and some of his first remarks must have been amusing, because I remember people behind me laughing and clapping. But nobody was laughing on the other side of the hall, not even the men in armour. The robed ones swayed gently – including fat Wendy, to my sorrow – and waves of binding, choking malevolence poured over me. Will had joined in to help me by then, which helped me hold it off a little, enough to think what I could do.
Damn it, White must be delegating! I thought. He has told someone lies about me and got this person to organise this for him. The best thing seemed to be to get that person. I tried aiming a massive stasis that way.
That was truly terrifying. Something promptly drank the stasis. It had no effect at all. Or worse, the stronger I applied it the faster it, and my own strength with it, vanished. Like water down a plughole. I was nearly completely thrown by that. Stasis is one of my great skills. In nearly total panic, with no Stan to tell me to stay calm, I found myself being sucked towards whatever was drinking my strength. Will put a hand on my arm then, and thank God he did. It calmed me enough to show me that I could use the sucking to divine what it was.
It was Tansy-Ann Fisk. Or rather, it was that grey psychic blanket she accused everyone else of bearing. It was a great pall of negative power, and it could go on drinking as long as I cared to go on throwing stasis at it. Now I had it tagged, I could even divine what Fisk thought she was at. Someone had told her I had ambitions to be secret ruler of the world. Well, that figured. As Maree had realised earlier, Magids can seem to want just that if you don’t know enough to know better.
“Stop pushing and just build a wall,” I gasped to Will.
We did that. That was Will’s special strength. But there were so many of them over there, and so strong, that it was precious hard work. We both sweated with it. But the cold waves rolled back a little.
Then, to our extreme irritation, Kornelius Punt leapt into the aisle and excitedly beckoned to the folk in robes. Ted Mallory stared from him to them and frowned as he talked. Kornelius then swung round, like a conductor, and beckoned to Will and me.
“I’ll wring that fellow’s neck!” Will snarled. “This isn’t a game!”
Kornelius thought it was, though. He saw everything as a game. I gave up the momentary idea I had had that Kornelius was acting as White’s lieutenant and probed among the grey cloaks to see who it really was. It had to be someone there.
By this time, Maree and Nick were aware that something was badly wrong. “Can we do something to help?” Maree murmured, still staring attentively at her uncle.
“Just hold my hand and grab Nick’s and both of you think strength,” I panted.
Her firm small hand instantly folded itself round mine. I heard her whisper, “Come on, Nick!” and I felt the result with gratitude, as an access of energy and, in Maree’s case, pleasure at being able to do something. Nick’s help was electric with excitement. He knew he was in a genuine magic battle and, in his quieter way, he was almost as high on it as Kornelius was.
Kornelius saw we had co-opted help. He beckoned the other side of the aisle again. Gram White was laughing. He thought this was really funny. His lieutenant was not so amused. With the new help from Maree and Nick, we were strong enough, Will and I, to build one of the stone-hard domes of protection Will is so good at. The lieutenant found himself forced to stand up and yelp some kind of command at the massed men in armour. They began to sway in their seats, clank, rattle, clank, and to hum a note deep in their throats.
Damn! I thought. That was a power song.
Ted Mallory stopped speaking and coughed into his microphone. “Do you mind?”
The deep note faded to a whisper, but it did not stop. Nor did the shuffling, rattling clink of armoured bodies swaying. Mallory shrugged. “Suppose the constellation of Orion became animated…” he continued, looking irritated.