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The Merlin Conspiracy
Diana Wynne Jones
A bestselling fantasy adventure about two teens from two very different worlds, who must work together to save the universe. The companion novel to the bestselling Deep Secret.Arianrhod Hyde's world (or Roddy, as she prefers to be called) is very much the world of magic, pageantry and ritual. Presiding over all, the most important person is the Merlin, who is entrusted with the magical health of the Isles of Blest.Nick Mallory's world is much more familiar – at least, it starts off being our own. But Nick's not the ordinary 15 year old he seems, as he slips sideways into something he thinks is a dream – but in fact is another world entirely. Now, Nick's been on other worlds before (although never alone) but he's a confident type. Maybe a bit too confident…In Roddy's world, the current Merlin expires and a new one takes his place. Yet something is wrong – the rituals have been upset and nothing is going the way it should. Roddy needs help, and Nick might be the one to do it – even if he can’t use magic…Their stories unfold, side-by-side, and the Merlin Conspiracy thickens – two stories combining until the mystery is finally revealed.Compelling, howlingly funny in places, mind-boggling – this story will wow Diana Wynne Jones fans all around the world (and probably in other universes too).
To Rowan Dalglish
Contents
Dedication (#u0787a8bd-f600-5a8b-9dac-b4ee5f6a5a0b)
Part One - Roddy (#ulink_734178a9-8869-5dd3-aec7-eca3805844ad)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_5f0f71c2-5dd6-5e85-8f85-31af16741a40)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_029290f7-0f60-59aa-b899-682608aa3f02)
Part Two - Nick (#ulink_23380e98-799e-51fc-a1d0-69dd5b38697f)
Chapter 3 (#ulink_3f868228-bf29-5bc4-98ae-ff5bf1c881f0)
Chapter 4 (#ulink_9897d6e3-7eab-5648-b034-88e658795e1e)
Part Three - Roddy (#ulink_de5fe0c0-c3d6-5962-b387-b4f4cffd3a5b)
Chapter 5 (#ulink_2eea3d66-b46f-5fb8-9940-801d5b535128)
Chapter 6 (#ulink_03fd60cd-ecd7-574d-94bd-ab5a33402c3b)
Part Four - Nick (#ulink_2cac87ee-7b21-5c83-99e5-7c5fb0526f6f)
Chapter 7 (#ulink_509ec5bd-da1d-59a5-b772-b0929e670e51)
Chapter 8 (#ulink_2a47f871-4420-5096-b953-4575924ee068)
Part Five - Roddy (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Six - Nick (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Seven - Nick Continued (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Eight - Roddy (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Nine - Nick (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Ten - Roddy and Nick (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Eleven - Roddy and Nick (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Twelve - Roddy and Nick (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Titles by Diana Wynne Jones (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
(#ulink_875dd44a-3dc4-5ff3-ad4d-ca1cd4d4e9fc)
(#ulink_e23e3cea-7d1b-5c93-9864-9b6b3ad660c3)
I have been with the Court all my life, travelling with the King’s Progress.
I didn’t know how to go on. I sat and stared at this sentence, until Grundo said, “If you can’t do it, I will.”
If you didn’t know Grundo, you’d think this was a generous offer, but it was a threat really. Grundo is dyslexic. Unless he thinks hard, he writes inside out and backwards. He was threatening me with half a page of crooked writing with words like “inside” turning up as “sindie” and “story” as “otsyr”.
Anything but that! I thought. So I decided to start with Grundo – and me. I am Arianrhod Hyde, only I prefer people to call me Roddy, and I’ve looked after Grundo for years now, ever since Grundo was a small, pale, freckled boy in rompers, sitting completely silently in the back of the children’s bus. He was so miserable that he had wet himself. I was only about five myself at the time, but I somehow realised that he was too miserable even to cry. I got up and staggered through the bumping, rushing bus to the clothes lockers. I found some clean rompers and persuaded Grundo to get into them.
This wasn’t easy, because Grundo has always been very proud. While I was working at it, Grundo’s sister Alicia turned round from where she was sitting with the big ones. “What are you bothering with Cesspit for?” she said, tipping up her long, freckled nose. “There’s no point. He’s useless.” She was eight at the time, but she still looks just the same: straight fair hair, thick body, and an air of being the person, the one everyone else has to look up to. “And he’s ugly,” she said. “He’s got a long nose.”
“So have you got a long nose,” I said, “Lady Sneeze.” I always called her “Lady Sneeze” when I wanted to annoy her. If you say “Alicia” quickly it sounds just like a well-behaved sneeze – just like Alicia, in fact. I wanted to annoy her for calling Grundo Cesspit. She only said it because Sybil, her mother, called Grundo that. It was typical of the way they both treated him. Grundo’s father left Sybil before Grundo was born. Ever since I could remember, Sybil and Alicia had been thick as thieves together. Poor Grundo was nowhere.
It got worse when Grundo started lessons with us and turned out to be dyslexic. Sybil went around sighing, “He’s so stupid!” And Alicia chanted at him, “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” Alicia, of course, did everything well, whether it was maths, magic or horse-riding. She got chosen as a Court page when she was ten.
Our teachers knew Grundo was not stupid, but his inside out way of going on baffled them. They sighed too and called Grundo “Our young eccentric” and I was the one who taught Grundo to read and write. I think that was when I started calling him Grundo. I can’t quite remember why, except that it suited him better than his real name, which is Ambrose of all things! Before long, the entire Court called him Grundo. And while I was teaching him, I discovered that he had an unexpected amount of inside out magical talent.
“This book is boring,” he complained in his deep, solemn voice. “Why should I care if Jack and Jill go shopping? Or if Rover chases the ball?” While I was explaining to him that all reading books were like this, Grundo somehow turned the book into a comic book, all pictures and no words. It started at the back and finished at the front, and in the pictures the ball chased Rover and Jack and Jill were bought by the groceries. Only Grundo would think of two people being bought by a huge chunk of cheese.
He refused to turn the book back. He said it was more fun that way, and I couldn’t turn it back into a reading book whatever I tried. It’s probably still where I hid it, down inside the cover of the old teaching bus seat. Grundo is obstinate as well as proud.
You might say I adopted Grundo as my brother. We were both on our own. I am an only child and all the other Court wizards’ children were the same age as Alicia or older still. The other children our own age were sons and daughters of Court officials, who had no gift for magic. They were perfectly friendly – don’t get me wrong – but they just had a more normal outlook.
There were only about thirty of us young ones who travelled in the King’s Progress all the time. The rest only joined us for Christmas or for the other big religious ceremonies. Grundo and I always used to envy them. They didn’t have to wear neat clothes and remember Court manners all the time. They knew where they were going to be, instead of travelling through the nights and finding themselves suddenly in a flat field in Norfolk, or a remote Derbyshire valley, or a busy port somewhere next morning. They didn’t have to ride in buses in a heatwave. Above all, they could go for walks and explore places. We were never really in one place long enough to do any exploring. The most we got to do was look round the various castles and great houses where the King decided to stay.
We envied the princesses and the younger princes particularly. They were allowed to stay in Windsor most of the year. Court gossip said that the Queen, being foreign, had threatened to go back to Denmark unless she was allowed to stay in one place. Everyone pitied the Queen rather for not understanding that the King had to travel about in order to keep the realm healthy. Some said that the whole magic of the Islands of Blest – or maybe the entire world of Blest – depended on the King constantly moving about and visiting every acre of England.
I asked my Grandfather Hyde about this. He is a Magid and knows about the magics of countries and worlds and so on. And he said that there might be something in this, but he thought people were overstating the case. The magic of Blest was very important for all sorts of reasons, he said, but it was the Merlin who was really entrusted with keeping it healthy.
My mother did quite often talk of sending me to live with this grandfather in London. But this would have meant leaving Grundo to the mercies of Sybil and Alicia, so, whenever she suggested it, I told her I was proud to be a member of Court – which was quite true – and that I was getting the best possible education – which was partly quite true – and then I sort of went heavy at her and hoped she’d forget the idea. If she got really anxious and went on about this being no sort of life for a growing girl, I went on about the way Grandad grows dahlias. I really do hate dahlias as a way of life.
Mam had her latest worry session in Northumbria, in the rain. We were all camped in a steep, heathery valley waiting for the Scottish King to pay our King a formal visit. It was so bare that there was not even a house for the King. The canvas of the royal tent was turning a wet, dismal yellow just downhill from us, and we were slithering in shiny, wet sheep droppings while I went on about the way Grandad grows dahlias.
“Besides, it’s such a stupid thing for a powerful magician to do!” I said.
“I wish you didn’t feel like this about him,” Mam said. “You know he does a great deal more than simply grow flowers. He’s a remarkable man. And he’d be glad to have you as company for your cousin Toby.”
“My cousin Toby is a wimp who doesn’t mind being ordered to do the weeding,” I said. I looked up at Mam through the wet black wriggles of my hair and realised that my dahlia-ploy hadn’t worked the way it usually did. Mam continued to look anxious. She is a serious person, my mam, weighed down by her responsible job in the travelling Exchequer, but I can usually get her to laugh. When she laughs, she throws her head back and looks very like me. We both have rather long pink cheeks and a dimple in the same place, though her eyes are black and mine are blue.
I could see the rain was getting her down – having to keep the water out of her computer and having to go to the loo in a little wet flapping tent and all the rest – and I saw it was one of the times when she starts imagining me going down with rheumatic fever or pneumonia and dying of it. I realised I’d have to play my very strongest card or I’d be packed off down to London before lunch.
“Come off it, Mam!” I said. “Grandad’s not your father. He’s Dad’s. If you’re so anxious for me to be in the bosom of my family, why not send me to your father instead?”
She pulled her shiny waterproof cape around her and went back a step. “My father is Welsh,” she said. “If you went there, you’d be living in a foreign country. All right. If you feel you really can stand this awful, wandering existence, we’ll say no more.”
She went away. She always did if anyone talked about her father. I thought he must be terrifying. All I knew about my other grandfather was that Mam had had to run away from home in order to marry Dad, because her father had refused to let her marry anyone. Poor Mam. And I’d used that to send her away. I sighed with mixed relief and guilt. Then I went to find Grundo.
Grundo’s lot is always worse when we’re stopped anywhere for a while. Unless I think of an excuse to fetch him away, Sybil and Alicia haul him into Sybil’s tent and try to correct his faults. When I ducked into the dim, damp space, it was worse than usual. Sybil’s manfriend was in there, laughing his nasty, hissing laugh. “Give him to me, dear,” I heard him saying. “I’ll soon make a man of him.” Grundo was looking pale, even for him.
The only person at Court that I dislike more than Alicia is Sybil’s manfriend. His name is Sir James Spenser. He is very unpleasant. The astonishing thing is that the whole Court, including Sybil, knows he is nasty, but they pretend not to notice because Sir James is useful to the King. I don’t understand about this. But I have noticed the same thing happening with some of the businessmen who are useful to the King. The media are constantly suggesting these men are crooks, but nobody even thinks of arresting them. And it is the same with Sir James, although I have no idea in what way he is useful to the King.
He gave me a leer. “Checking that I haven’t eaten your sweetheart?” he said. “Why do you bother, Arianrhod? If I had your connections, I wouldn’t look twice at young Ambrose.”
I looked him in the face, at his big, pocky nose and the eyes too near on either side of it. “I don’t understand you,” I said in my best Court manner. Polite but stony. I didn’t think my connections were particularly aristocratic. My father is only the King’s weather wizard and much further down the order than Sybil, who is, after all, Earthmistress to England.
Sir James did his hissing laugh at me. Hs-ss-szz. “The aristocracy of magic, my dear child,” he said. “Look at your grandparents! I should think at the very least you’d be setting your sweet young adolescent cap at the next Merlin.”
Sybil said sharply, “What?” and Alicia gave a gasp. When I looked at her, she was speckled pink with indignation. Alicia has even more freckles than Grundo. Sybil’s long, jowly face was furious. Her pale blue eyes were popping at me.
I didn’t understand what made them so angry. I just thought, Bother! Now I shall have to be very polite – and rather stupid – and pretend I haven’t noticed. This was typical of Sir James. He loved making everyone around him angry. “But we’ve got a perfectly good Merlin!” I said.
“An old man, my dear,” Sir James said gleefully. “Old and frail.”
“Yes,” I said, truly puzzled. “But there’s no knowing who’ll be the next one, is there?”
He looked at me pityingly. “There are rumours, dear child. Or don’t you listen to gossip with your naïve little ears?”
“No,” I said. I’d had enough of his game, whatever it was. I turned, very politely, to Sybil. “Please would it be all right if I took Grundo to watch my father work?”
