Deep Secret (Magids 1) - Page 55

The cold alerted me. A strong, permanent working has to get its energy from somewhere and this, unlike the magics of the path, was a permanent working, neatly designed to drain the energy of intruders by using their own metabolism against them. I stood still, and my knees nearly buckled. My teeth chattered. And I saw that I had not even been going uphill, but slantwise around. Stan would have laughed his head off. He had taught me all about this kind of thing. I felt my face heating with sheer embarrassment, as I realised that the path was nowhere near and the gate to the colony somewhere above and to the right.

I said, “Sod this for a game of soldiers! Knarros, you sent for me!” and I simply drove a path to the gate through all this nonsense and followed that path angrily. Anger has its uses. The hill was not really very steep and there were far fewer trees than I had thought. I reached the rough stone wall and the unpainted gate in it within about a minute. The wall was about twelve feet high, the gate an elderly splintery double slab of wood. I hammered on it.

“Open up! This is the Magid!”

I heard shuffling on the other side. The voice that answered reminded me of Rob’s. It was husky, but younger than Rob’s, and cracked on the last word. “What do you want?”

“I want to speak to Knarros of course! Urgently, on Empire business.”

Another voice answered, “Prove you’re a Magid.”

“Then you’d better stand clear of the gate,” I said. There was further shuffling. “Are you standing clear?” I called out.

“No,” said at least three voices in chorus. The husky one went on, “Knarros said no one was to come in.”

Then why the hell did he send Rob for me? I wondered. As it was evident from the sounds that at least three youngsters were bracing themselves against the gate from inside, I gave up the idea of forcing it open and went in over the top. It was nearly a disaster. I hate levitating (it’s one of my least secure skills) and there was some kind of magical protective dome over the place – this was certainly what had deflected Dakros’s beams – which I hit and nearly bounced off. I clawed hold just in time. Then I had to hang there and tear my way through, clawing with my fingernails and kicking with my feet, while the three youngsters inside gazed up at me hanging and struggling above them with their mouths open.

I landed beyond them, rather clumsily, and turned to face them. One was a young centaur, not as comely as Rob, but with a family likeness in the dark and aquiline nose. The other two were human boys about twelve and eleven years old. Neither was much to look at, but then Timos IX was not much of a looker either. Both had their long hair in an untidy pigtail down their backs. They wore grey woollen smocks and large home-made-looking shoes.

“How did you do that?” said the elder. He was the one with the husky voice.

I gave him a slight bow. He was, after all, almost certainly the future Emperor. “Levitation. You asked me to prove I’m a Magid. Now will one of you please direct me to Knarros.”

“Kris will get him,” piped the younger boy. “We have to stay here on guard.”

“Nothing like shutting the stable door,” I said. “As you please.”

The young centaur frowned at me as he trotted past. I did not feel like standing humbly by the gate waiting on the pleasure of Knarros – I was too irritated – so I followed him, but more slowly. The protection spell which I had torn through was draping around me and clinging to my shoes. It occurred to me that when I came to fire the signal gun, the stuff would probably deflect the flames back into my face, so I proceeded to get rid of it by kicking it loose and bundling it ahead of me with my arms as I went.

The walled space was largely a stony yard, dome-shaped because it took in the top of the hill. In the middle, at the summit, there was some kind of dark bush and an altar. Of course, I thought, they worship the Emperor’s dreary bush-goddess here. Otherwise the place was very barren and domestic. A few small stone houses were built against the circling walls, little more than stone huts really. There was a well and a line of washing, which I heaved my growing bundle of protection magic over, and very little else. My opinion of the late Emperor fell, if possible, even lower.

I had just passed the well when three girls came hastily out of one of the stone houses and stared at me. Apart from the fact that their hair was in two pigtails, they were dressed identically to the boys.

“What are you doing?” asked the youngest one.

“Taking down your protection. There’s no need for it now,” I said, and hoiked the bundle over their heads. It was fairly heavy by then, about the equivalent of a roll of carpet, only long and lissom and bendy. I thought, as I heaved it up beyond the three, that Lady Alexandra was going to have a sad time with these. The elder two might have been pretty enough in the right clothes, but they were what my

Yorkshire grandmother would have called gormless. The youngest, a fair little waif of about ten, gawped like a child half that age, and her nose was running. It could, I supposed, be the result of their evidently Spartan upbringing, but I doubted it. “You’ll be leaving here soon,” I explained.

“Leaving? Knarros never said anything about leaving!” one of the elder ones exclaimed. And, as if my statement had rendered me undesirable, she hastily propelled the other two back into the stone hut again.

I shrugged and went on, bundling the spell stuff uphill ahead of me, until I reached the altar-stone. It was just a small, plain stone, slightly stained with fruit and pips on top. The bush was the unpleasant thing. I disliked it acutely. It was greyish, barbed and spiny, and it stirred and crackled at my approach, giving out the feeling of a deity half-manifested – a small deity, but not a pleasant one. I tried not to look at it, thinking that it was an unfortunate thing that the link between the Emperor and Knarros should be something as barren and unpleasant as this.

And Knarros was on his way now. I heard the shrill battering of hooves on stones, coming up the hill from my right. The sun was very low by then. When I looked towards the sounds, I could see blue sparks from the centaur’s iron shoes. I remember thinking that one of the tradesmen allowed up that cart track had to be a farrier. Rob and Kris were properly shod too, better shod than the imperial children.

Then Knarros hove up the hill in front of me and I found myself gulping slightly. He was enormous. He towered over me like a mounted policeman over a riot. I heaved the spell-bundle over the altar and the bush and let it slide its own way down the yard on the other side. The bush-deity whipped about angrily as I turned to face Knarros. And here was another thing I had not realised about centaurs. The skin colour of their human torso is the same colour as the skin under the horse-coat. I had been misled by the fact that Rob and Kris were both light bays. Knarros in his horse part was dark iron grey. So were his face, his beard, his hair and his arms. He wore a grey sleeveless vest. The effect was like being confronted by a huge living granite statue. The expression on his face was in keeping with that. I have seldom faced a being who looked less friendly.

“I’m told you’re the Magid,” he said. His voice was a hard, deep rumble.

“That is correct,” I said. “And you’re Knarros?” The granite head bent in a curt nod. “Good,” I said. “Then you’ll know I’m here on Empire business. According to the files the Emperor left in Iforion, you have the imperial children here – those of the True Wives at least, I gather. As you must have heard, the Emperor, Timos IX, was assassinated about six weeks ago, so now I must ask you to hand over the new Emperor, together with proof of his birth, and any other children, by High Ladies or Lesser Consorts, with similar proofs, so that I can convey them to those people who are temporarily in charge of the Empire.”

Knarros simply stood like a statue.

“Oh come now,” I said. “The record the Emperor left states that you have details of all the heirs, including those placed on the world codenamed Babylon.”

The granite statue reacted to the word “Babylon”. A flank flinched as if a horsefly had stung it. The hard voice rumbled, “I’m sorry. I can tell you nothing unless I am assured that you are indeed a Magid. I cannot be assured of Magid good faith on your word alone. I must request you prove your status.”

This seemed fair enough. From the centaur’s point of view I could simply be a rogue mage with designs on his charges. I summoned a little-used skill and caused the golden Infinity sign to appear floating between us, softly glowing and rotating around its own figure-of-eight substance in the correct way. It was very beautiful, and very bright in the gathering twilight.

Tags: Diana Wynne Jones Magids Fantasy
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