Deep Secret (43 page)

Just before three, we were all smartened up, except Will, who is uncomfortable in any but the oldest clothes. I had got round to shaving at last. Zinka, when she fetched Maree some clothes, had changed into a flowing green velvet gown, which made her by far the most striking member of the group. We left my room in a body. And, I see in retrospect, that was the last moment when events were in any way within my control.

In the corridor outside my room was a large crowd of people, all of them concerned and agitated. Mr Alfred Douglas, the hotel manager, was prominent among them and so was Rick Corrie. The rest seemed to be the entire convention committee, with the exception of Maxim Hough. As we came out of my room, Mr Douglas was pointing to the large brown pebbly area in the ceiling where Gram White’s bullet, deflected by my shield, had brought down the plaster. One of the committee was saying huffily, “Yes, of
course
we’ll pay for it, if you can prove it was a convention member who did it. Frankly, I don’t see
how
—”

“Uh-oh!” said Zinka. “Let me handle this. You go. I’ll catch you up.” She took hold of Rick Corrie’s arm. As we edged past towards the lift, she was saying to him, “You’d better send the bill for this to Gram White. He loosed off with a gun. I saw him do it. Want me to speak to the manager for you?”

And Corrie replied frantically, “Well, don’t tell him
that
! He’d never let us hold the convention here again!”

“Trust me,” Zinka said and walked demurely up to Mr Douglas. Goodness knows what story she was preparing to spin, but I felt I could trust her to say something convincing. We went on without her.

Zinka had still not caught up with us when we reached the main function room. It was largely full already. The seats on the far side of the aisle were packed. I saw fat Wendy over there and one or two people I knew, but a surprising number of them were either concealed in grey capes or wearing armour. Chain mail and horned helmets predominated, but plate armour was in there too, from every conceivable era of history. I heard Nick explaining to Will – both of them looking rather wistfully at the costumes – that a lot of people arrived on the Sunday specially for the tournament. New arrivals or not, these people were certainly having fun. Most of them had tankards or bottles to hand and, from time to time, a sort of clanking Mexican wave was in progress, accompanied by huge shouts and much waving of a long white banner with
SWORDS AND SORCERY
painted on it.

The nearer side was nearly as full, mostly with people I had come to know over the first day or so. I saw the lady with O
OOK
on her, my world-sharing American friends, the singers who had interrupted my tête-à-tête with Thurless, and the three folk with the baby, now dressed quite normally in jeans. In fact, almost the only empty seats were in the front row on this side. It is curious the way nobody likes to sit in the front row. The only people in it were Tina Gianetti and her boyfriend, near the centre aisle. It seemed that Gianetti was keeping to her vow never to chair anything involving Ted Mallory.

I saw Kornelius Punt rise from his seat somewhere in the centre in order to stare at us avidly as we filed into the empty front row, but this was so much his usual behaviour that I thought nothing of it. I could sense also that the crowd in the armour were raising power, but this is something an excited crowd does anyway. I thought little of that either, except to make sure that we had the usual protections around us. Most of my attention was on the half-laughing argument I was having with Maree. Both of us were enjoying the sense that so much more was going on between us, behind the argument.

As we were sitting down, most of the men in horned helmets broke into low, lilting song. One of the three ladies-and-gentlemen with the baby remarked, “They will keep doing that. I suppose it keeps them happy.”

I grinned at him-or-her and said to Maree, “But I’ve got a big yard at the back. They’ll have lots of exercise.”

“They’ll need to swim,” Maree said. “It’s bad for aquatic birds not to.”

“I tell you what,” I said. “Andrew, my neighbour’s, got a pond in his garden just up the road. I know he’ll let the quacks use it.”

“They’ll probably find it anyway,” she said. “Is it clean?”

“Good question,” I said. “As Andrew is an inventor and the most absent-minded man I ever knew, probably not. I’ll make him have it dredged. Or perhaps I should change houses with him.”

“I still think you should dig a pond in your kitchen,” Maree said. “People who keep pets have to make sacrifices.”

“Wouldn’t it do,” I asked, “if I simply went and stood in Andrew’s pond? Day and night, of course.”

“Oh yes,” she said. “In your nice suit and Will’s green wellies.”

We were laughing at this image when we looked up to find Janine standing over us, in a new jumper that looked as if she was being eaten by a lettuce. Little green beads like caterpillars danced on her left shoulder. “How did you get here?” she said to Maree.

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.

From then on, things got really vicious. While Ted Mallory elaborated his fantasty about Orion – and Will and I both wished he wouldn’t: it verged on a deep secret of the Magids and distracted us – the lieutenant flung his worst at us. Power built so from the hum and rattle that all I could do was hold my share of the protective dome and make jabs at the grey-robed figure of the lieutenant, trying to find out who he was and where his weakness lay. His minions, being mostly amateurs, found the increased power difficult and lost their hold on it somewhat. Physical manifestations began. First it was filthy smells, and then lurid green smokes. When half-seen things like Chinese dragons flared and floated overhead, the baby behind me burst out crying and had to be carried out of the hall. Quite a lot of people left around then, and I didn’t blame them. Shortly, blue sparks began to sputter across the metal of all that armour. I saw horned figures leaping out of their seats in order to beat at themselves. This disrupted the power-build just enough so that my latest jab at the lieutenant caused his grey hood to fall back. It was Thurless.