The Merlin Conspiracy (38 page)

Around lunchtime he took a break and drank a cup of tea with me out on the baking lawn. I was looking up at the salamanders vibrating all over the roof. If you half closed your eyes, you could take them for a heat shimmer—them and the transparent people both. The transparent folks were obviously very interested and came drifting up in droves. The goat was beginning to look almost nervous.

I said it was lucky there was still this heat wave.

“Well, yes,” Maxwell Hyde said, staring up at the roof, too, “except that it's all so dry. It would only take one spark from one frightened salamander— What
really
makes me angry is that importing these creatures is so cruel and unnecessary! If the fools doing it simply want to raise some extra power, why don't they tap busy roads or power lines? Or there are hundreds of power nodes in these islands. They don't
need
to torment living beings.”

“Have you found where they're coming from?” I asked.

“Not yet,” he said. “But I will.” And he went back to making calls.

After supper that evening he had his answer. The salamanders were being brought in by air from someplace in Egypt that wasn't a place on Earth, or at least it was nowhere I'd ever heard of. The next cargo flight from there came into London Airport late on Saturday.

“Nick, Toby, pencil in a sleepless night on Saturday,” he said gleefully as he turned the media on, starting the evening routine. “And remind me, one of you, to buy another couple of laundry hampers.”

The media came on and reported that a barge on its way to Manchester had suddenly burst into flames. A lorry going to Norwich had done the same, and Bristol city center was on fire. Maxwell Hyde watched, champing the pencil he'd been taking notes with all day. “They're being sent all over the country,” he said. “Why? Who needs extra magic in all these places all of a sudden?”

“I hope the salamanders on the barge got to land,” Toby said, putting one finger gently on the salamander lying along his shoulder.

“So do I,” said Maxwell Hyde. “By the way, that salamander stays
here
when we go to see your father tomorrow.”

Toby's face went white and mulish, but he didn't make the fuss I would have expected. I suppose that said something about what his father was like.

His father is called Jerome Kirk. He was living all by himself these days, in a farmhouse somewhere just south of the main chalk hills—the Ridgeway Downs was the name of them in Blest. I wouldn't have called it that far from London, but Blest only has a couple of big motor roads, and even those wind about like anything. In order to get to Toby's dad before lunch, we started at what felt like dawn to me. I still hadn't got my eyes open when they bundled me into the car.

For the first part of the journey I grumped to myself that if they weren't going to have railways, then the least they could do was build a few good motorways, and worried about feeling carsick. Then my eyes came open, and I felt better. I even began admiring the way the green land lifted out of the milky white heat haze into a row of hills like a long spine across the middle of the country. The road snaked along under rows of dry trees, keeping the spine of hills in the distance, until we turned into a narrow lane, and then down more narrow lanes, and arrived at the farmhouse crouching among a lot more trees below the hills on the south side.

We unstuck ourselves from the car seats and went and knocked at the unpainted front door. It was a gloomy, yellow old house, and it seemed amazing how anywhere could be so dark inside on such a blazing bright day. It had glum stone floors and low ceilings with lots of beams that didn't seem to have been painted, or even dusted, for about half a century. There was dust and clobber everywhere. Toby's dad kind of prowled about in it with his back to us most of the time. He was a big man with a big, bushy beard and a big, veiny nose and rather small, weepy eyes. He had a big belly, too, but the chief thing I remember—probably from seeing his back so much—was his bent, baggy legs in bent, baggy trousers. I kept thinking that when he took those trousers off at night, he probably leaned them against a chair and they stood up by themselves in the same bent shape.

I think Jerome Kirk was supposed to be an artist, but there wasn't much sign of it. One small room had an easel and paints and things in it, but they were all covered with dust like everywhere else.

He didn't seem all that glad to see us. “So you came,” he said. “I didn't think you would.”

Toby didn't seem exactly over the moon either. He said, “Hallo, Dad,” in a subdued way. Jerome Kirk showed his teeth in a savage smile of welcome—I suppose it was welcome—and gave Toby a clout between the shoulders. Then he went on his prowl, while we stood there.

After a bit he prowled back carrying a big earthenware jug. “You must be thirsty,” he said. “This is my own homemade perry. Want some?”

Maxwell Hyde and Toby said, “No, thank you,” in chorus, but I was so hot and so thirsty that I said, “Yes, please!” I thought, while Jerome Kirk poured me out some into a dusty glass, that Maxwell Hyde muttered something like “Not really advisable,” but I didn't see why until I took a big, thirsty swig.

The stuff was not just horrible. It was like being carsick. It was like the times when you burp wrong and your stomach juices come up into your mouth. I wondered if I was poisoned.

Luckily Jerome Kirk poured himself a big tankard full and wandered off again, jug in one hand, drink in the other. “… outside and look at my orchard,” his voice came echoing back.

We followed him out through his kitchen, where I seized the chance to pour the glassful down the sink and replace it with water. Toby got the giggles. Maxwell Hyde coolly got them both a drink of water, too, and we went outside into knee-length grass and clumps of nettles.

There were a lot of fruit trees there, but they weren't up to much. They were old and bent, with branches missing and a few pale little apples or wormy plums on the sick-looking boughs that were left. Dad would have had a fit. He
cherishes
his fruit trees. And Maxwell Hyde looked as if he agreed with my dad. He went wandering off with his mouth turned down at the ends. The thing I was most interested in out there was a rickety table with things on it covered with cloths and wasps circling. It looked like lunch.

But obviously not yet. Toby just quietly disappeared, so I went wandering down the slope of the orchard, avoiding nettles and drinking my water, and wondering what we were supposed to do now we had come all this way to be here.

Down at the end, in soggy green grass, Jerome Kirk suddenly appeared and cornered me against a giant tangle of blackberry bush interlaced with nettles. He did it really expertly. All through the talk we had, I was weaving this way and that, trying to escape and hitting a huge, thorny branch if I went one way and a mixture of nettles and thistles if I went the other. If I found what seemed a way to slide out, Jerome Kirk just wandered nearer and cut the way off. By the end I was backed right up against the tangle, getting prickled all over. I was really upset. Usually I pride myself on being able to duck out of anything, but he had me completely caught.

“I was going to speak to Toby,” he said, “but you'll do even better. Seething with talent, aren't you? What are you doing going around with Maxwell Hyde?”

“He's teaching me,” I said, sliding to the right and hitting thorns. I slid left and got nettled. “I needed to learn about magic.”

Jerome Kirk spit into the blackberry bush. “Bloody Magid,” he said. “They can't stir a finger without permission from Above, these Magids. Brownnose puppy dogs. You'd be far better off coming in with us instead.”

“Er,” I said, trying another slide into thorns. “Coming in with who?” The thorns brought me up short, and I was forced to stare at the red veins in his nose and at his dirty beard. I thought he must be the last person in Blest I'd ever want to join up with. I felt sorry for Toby for having the man as his father. I mean, by all accounts, my own father was pretty awful, too, but I'd never met him. I felt a gust of pure thankfulness that I had been able to choose Dad instead. “What do you mean?” I said.

He leaned toward me and began speaking eagerly, waving the jug in his hand in circles, and I leaned backward, trying to get out of range of the yucky smell of the perry from the jug and from his breath.

“We're an association,” he said, “but we don't name ourselves. We just exist and gather strength and numbers. Now the Merlin's put himself at our head, we're really going places. We're going to clear these islands of the old-school-tie, entrenched magics, and the wimps and Magids and brownnoses that crawl along with them, and we're going to bring in new energies, new people, the
small
magic users who are never given a chance under this present regime. You're young. You need to join our new order. You don't want to be throttled by their stupid
rules
!”

He went on like this for quite a while. Every so often he seemed to go on a prowl, but he only
seemed
to. He was really moving in to pin me down closer each time. I stood there licking at sweat gathering on my top lip and felt truly trapped.

Then he said, “
Think
about it. We've already discovered a whole new source of power. Salamanders! How about
that
? You'd never get any of the old guard finding an idea like that, would you?” He leaned toward me, gathered his tankard and his jug into one hand, and tapped the side of his big, veiny nose at me. I stared. I had never seen anyone do that before, not outside the telly, not for real. “And that's only one of the new ideas that are coming through,” he told me. “I know. I'm in their inmost councils. They asked me to live here and keep an eye on the old magics in case they get out of hand. That's a fact. And I'll tell you another thing.” He tapped his nose at me again. “We're almost ready to show our hand. You don't have long to decide.
Think
about it. And if you want to join us—and you will, of course—just give me a nod before you go. Right?”

I was backed into the bush by then. I said, “Right,” feebly.

He nodded, and to my immense relief he turned his baggy back and prowled away.

All I could think of after that was to find Maxwell Hyde and tell him what Jerome Kirk had said about salamanders. It seemed urgent to me if they really were getting ready for a revolution or whatever. And I could see that it tied in with what Roddy had said. But I couldn't find Maxwell Hyde anywhere at first, and when I did, he was at the rickety table with Jerome Kirk and Toby. They were waiting for me to begin lunch.

Lunch was a bit of a trial. It was cold meat and bread, which was all right, but there was this great swimmy dish of homemade pickle in the middle, and the wasps really went for that. I kept trying to show Maxwell Hyde I had something urgent to tell him, but I couldn't sort of get through to him. We were all too busy dodging wasps.

Before the end of lunch Maxwell Hyde and Jerome Kirk got into an argument about politics, and as soon as they started, I thought, Stupid! What am I worrying about? Tell him on the way home! Toby slipped away the moment the argument began. I was sick of the wasps, so I slipped off, too.

I went the way I thought I saw Toby go, across the road and uphill from the house. There was a path there, winding up onto the hot hillside, so I went that way, twisting about among head-high bushes, until I came out on a steep grassy bit where the path forked.

There I stopped. It came to me with a sort of
thump
that Jerome Kirk had not been lying when he said he lived near the old magics. There was a wood up to my right. It was dark, hot, and rustling and made of very upright old trees. I found I was staring at it nearly with terror. Whatever was inside that wood was very old, very strong, and—well—awesome. I simply could not bring myself to go near it. If Toby had gone there, he was a lot braver than I was.

I took the left fork instead. It went veering along below the top of the hillside. There was a bit of a breeze up there that rattled the dry, wiry ends of the grass and shook hot smells, almost like spice, out of no end of dry, wiry flowers. Insects hummed or hopped, but none of them were wasps and it was blazingly, strongly peaceful there. If I looked down, all I could see were woods and fields into blue distance. If I looked up, there was blue, blue sky and, against it, the green hilltop which sort of peeled back in places to show hard whiteness, like the hill's bones.

It came to me as I wandered on, and more and more whiteness peeled out of the green turf, that I must be walking westward along that spine of chalk downs that I had seen from the main road. In that case, I thought, the whiteness
was
like bones, the backbone of Blest. I kept looking up at it as I walked. And after nearly a mile I came to a place where more turf than usual had peeled away, into a sort of humpy cliff. The humps fell into a most definite shape. There were two long pieces with a slight gap between and, above and back eastward of those, a big bulge and a sort of hollow in the midst of the bulge.

I was thinking of bones. I thought to myself that this bit really almost looked like a huge skull. An enormous animal skull, with huge jaws, many times larger than an elephant's skull. And I imagined to myself that this creature—a really immense creature—was lying all along the hillside just below the top of it, mostly buried in chalk and turf.