The Lives of Christopher Chant (16 page)

“I will,” said the Goddess decisively. She stuffed the piece of pancake into Christopher’s mouth and dusted her hands with a determined jangle. “I’ll go and ask her this minute!” And she strode out of the room,
chank-chink
,
chank-chink
, sounding rather like the soldiers at that moment marching around the yard behind Christopher’s back.

He spat the pancake out, shut his eyes to squeeze the water out, and wished he was able to cross his fingers.

Five minutes later, the Goddess strode back looking much more cheerful. “Done it!” she said. “She didn’t want to tell me. I had to bully her. But I told her to take her very stupid face off and stop trying to fool me, and she gave in.” She looked at Christopher rather wonderingly. “I’ve never got the upper hand of her before!”

“Yes, but what did she
say
?” Christopher asked. He would have danced with impatience if the wall had not stopped him.

“Oh, nothing yet,” said the Goddess. “But I promise faithfully I’ll let you go when she does. She said she couldn’t manage it at once. She wanted to wait till tomorrow, but I said that was far too long. So she said that the very earliest she could manage a portent was midnight tonight—”

“Midnight!”
Christopher exclaimed.

“That’s only three hours away now,” the Goddess told him soothingly. “And I said she had to make it on the dot, or I’d be really angry. You must understand her point of view—she has to pull the strings of Fate and that does take time.”

With his heart sinking, Christopher tried to calculate what time that would make it back at the Castle. The very earliest he could get it to was ten o’clock in the morning. But perhaps the maid who came to wake him would simply think he was tired. It would take her an hour or so to get worried enough to tell Flavian or someone, and by that time he would be back with any luck. “Midnight then,” he said, sighing a bit. “And you’re to let me go then, or I’ll summon a whirlwind, set everything on fire and take the roof off the Temple.”

During those three hours, he kept wondering why he did not do that at once. It was only partly that he did not want to lose another life. He felt a sort of duty to wait and set the Goddess’s mind at rest. He had started her worrying by making that remark, and before that he had made her discontented by bringing her those school stories. He had a lot of fellow-feeling for her in her strange lonely life. And of course Papa had told him that you did not use magic against a lady. Somehow all these things combined to keep Christopher sagging in a half-sitting way in the wall, patiently waiting for midnight.

Some of the time the Goddess sat on her cushions, tensely stroking the white cat, as if she expected the portent any moment. Much of the time she was busy. She was called away to lessons, and then to prayers, and finally to have a bath. While she was away, Christopher had the rather desperate idea that he might be able to get in touch with the life he knew must be lying in bed at the Castle. He thought he might be able to get it to get up and do lessons for him. But though he had a sort of feeling of a separate piece of him quite clearly, he did not seem to be in touch with it—or if he was, he had no means of knowing. Do lessons! he thought. Get out of bed and behave like me! And he wondered for the hundredth time why he did not simply blow up the Temple and leave.

Finally the Goddess came back in a long white nightgown and only two bracelets. She kissed Mother Proudfoot good-night in the archway and got among her white cushions with her arms lovingly around her white cat. “It won’t be long now,” she told Christopher.

“It had better not be!” he said. “Honestly, I can’t think why you grumble about your life. I’d swap your Mother Proudfoot for Flavian and Gabriel any day!”

“Yes, maybe I am being silly,” the Goddess agreed, rather drowsily. “On the other hand, I can tell you don’t believe in Asheth and that makes you see it quite differently from me.”

Christopher could tell by her breathing that she dropped off to sleep then. He must have dozed himself in the end. The jellylike wall was not really uncomfortable.

He was roused by a strange high cheeping noise. It was an oddly desperate sound, a little like the noise baby birds make calling and calling to be fed. Christopher jumped awake to find a big bar of white moonlight falling across the tiles of the floor.

“Oh look!” said the Goddess. “It’s the portent.” Her pointing arm came into the moonlight, with a bracelet dangling from it. She was pointing to Bethi the white cat. Bethi was lying stiffly stretched out in the bar of moonlight. Something tiny and very, very white was crawling and scrambling all over Bethi, filling the air with desperate high crying.

The Goddess surged off her cushions and onto her knees and picked the tiny thing up. “It’s frozen,” she said. “Bethi’s had a kitten and—” There was a long pause. “Christopher,” said the Goddess, obviously trying to sound calm, “Bethi’s dead. That means I’m going to die when they get a new Living Asheth.”

Kneeling by the dead cat, she screamed and screamed and screamed.

Lights went on. Feet flapped on the tiles, running. Christopher struggled to get himself as far back in the wall as he could. He knew how the Goddess felt. He had felt the same when he woke up in the mortuary. But he wished she would stop screaming. As skinny Mother Proudfoot rushed into the room followed by two other Priestesses, he did his best to begin a levitation spell.

But the Goddess kept her promise. Still screaming, she backed away from Bethi’s pathetic corpse as if it horrified her, and flung out one arm dramatically, so that her dangling bracelet flipped Christopher’s invisible nose. Luckily the bracelet was silver.

Christopher landed back in his own bed in the Castle with the crash he was now used to. He was solid and visible and in his pajamas, and, by the light, it was nearly midday. He sat up hastily. Gabriel de Witt was sitting in the wooden chair across the room, staring at him even more grimly than usual.

G
ABRIEL HAD HIS ELBOWS
on the arms of the chair and his long, knob-knuckled hands together in a point under his eagle nose. Over them, his eyes seemed as hard to look away from as the dragon’s.

“So you have been spirit traveling,” he said. “I suspect you do so habitually. That would explain a great deal. Will you kindly inform me just where you have been and why it took you so long to come back.”

There was nothing Christopher could do but explain. He rather wished he could have died instead. Losing a life was nothing compared with the way Gabriel looked at him.

“The Temple of Asheth!” Gabriel said. “You foolish boy! Asheth is one of the most vicious and vengeful goddesses in the Related Worlds. Her military Arm has been known to pursue people across worlds and over many years, on far slighter grounds than
you
have given her. Thank goodness you refrained from blowing a hole in her Temple. And I am relieved that you at least had the sense to leave the Living Asheth to her fate.”

“Her fate? They weren’t really going to kill her off, were they?” Christopher asked.

“Of course they will,” Gabriel said in his calmest and driest way. “That was the meaning of the portent: the older Goddess dies when the new Living Asheth is chosen. The theory, I believe, is that the older one will enrich the power of the deity. This one must be particularly valuable to them, as she seems to be quite an enchantress in her own right.”

Christopher was horrified. He saw suddenly that the Goddess had known, or at least suspected, what was going to happen to her. That was why she had tried to get him to help. “How can you be so calm about it?” he said. “She’s only got one life. Can’t you do something to help her?”

“My good Christopher,” said Gabriel, “there are, over all the Series of all the Related Worlds, more than a hundred worlds, and in more than half of them there are practices which horrify any civilized person. If I were to expend my time and sympathy on these, I would have none left over to do what I am paid to do—which is to prevent the misuse of magic
here.
This is why I must take action over you. Do you deny that you have been misusing magic?”

“I—” said Christopher.

“You most certainly have,” said Gabriel. “You must have lost at least three of your lives in some other world—and you may, for all I know, have lost all six while you were spirit traveling. But since the outer life, the life you
should
have lost, was lying here apparently asleep, natural laws have been forced to bend in order to enable you to lose it in the proper way. Much more of this, and you will set up a serious singularity throughout Series Twelve.”

“I didn’t lose one this time,” Christopher said defensively.

“Then you must have lost it last time you went spirit traveling,” Gabriel said. “You are definitely one short again. And this is not going to occur any more, Christopher. Oblige me by getting dressed at once and coming with me to my office.”

“Er—” Christopher said. “I haven’t had breakfast yet. Can I—?”

“No,” said Gabriel.

By this Christopher knew that things were very bad indeed. He found he was shaking as he got up and went to the washroom. The door of the washroom would not shut. Christopher could tell Gabriel was holding it open with a strong spell to make sure he did not try to get away. Under Gabriel’s eyes, he washed and dressed quicker than he had ever done in his life.

“Christopher,” Gabriel said, while he was hurriedly brushing his hair, “you must realize that I am deeply concerned about you. Nobody should lose lives at the rate that you do. What is wrong?”

“I don’t do it just to annoy you,” Christopher said bitterly, “if that’s what you think.”

Gabriel sighed. “I may be a poor guardian, but I know my duty,” he said. “Come along.”

He stalked silently through the corridors with Christopher half running to keep up. What
had
become of his sixth life? Christopher wondered, with what bit of his mind was not taken up with terror. He was inclined to think that Gabriel had miscounted.

Inside the twilight office, Miss Rosalie and Dr. Simonson were waiting with one of the younger men on the Castle staff. All of them were swathed in a shimmering transparent spell. Christopher’s eyes flicked anxiously from them to the leather couch in the middle of the dark floor. It reminded him of a dentist’s chair. Beyond it was a stand holding two bell jars. The one on the left had a large bobbin hanging from nothing inside it, while the one on the right seemed to be empty except for a curtain ring or something lying at the bottom.

“What are you going to do?” Christopher said, and his voice came out more than a little squeaky.

Miss Rosalie stepped up to Gabriel and handed him some gloves on a glass tray. As Gabriel worked his fingers into the gloves, he said, “This is the severe step I warned you of after your fire. I intend to remove your ninth life from you without harming either it or you. Afterwards I shall put it in the Castle safe, under nine charms that only I can unlock. Since you will then only be able to have that life by coming to me and asking me to unlock those nine charms, this might induce you to be more careful with the two lives you will have left.”

Miss Rosalie and Dr. Simonson began wrapping Gabriel in a sheeny spell like their own. “Taking a life out intact is something only Gabriel knows how to do,” Miss Rosalie said proudly.

Dr. Simonson, to Christopher’s surprise, seemed to be trying to be kind. He said, “These spells are only for hygiene. Don’t look so alarmed. Lie down on this couch now. I promise you it won’t hurt a bit.”

Just what the dentist said! Christopher thought as he quakingly lay down.

Gabriel turned this way and that to let the spell settle around him. “The reason Frederick Parkinson is here,” he said, “and not patrolling the World Edge as he should be, is to make sure that you do no spirit traveling while your life is being detached. That would put you in extreme peril, Christopher, so please try to remain in this world while we work.”

Someone cast a very strong sleep spell then. Christopher went out like a light. Dr. Simonson turned out to have told the truth. He felt nothing at all for several hours. When he woke up, ravenously hungry and slightly itchy deep inside somewhere, he simply felt rather cheated. If he did have to have a life taken away, he would have liked to have watched how it was done.

Gabriel and the others were leaning against the black desk, drinking tea and looking exhausted. Frederick Parkinson said, “You
kept
trying to spirit travel. I had my work cut out to stop you.”

Miss Rosalie hurried to bring Christopher a cup of tea too. “We kept you asleep until your life was all on the bobbin,” she said. “It’s just winding down into the gold ring now—look.” She pointed to the two bell jars. The bobbin inside the left-hand jar was almost full of shiny pinkish thread, and it was rotating in a slow stately way in the air. In the right-hand jar, the ring was up in the air now too, spinning fast and jerkily. “How are you now, dear?” Miss Rosalie asked.

“Can you feel anything? Are you quite well?” Gabriel asked. He sounded rather anxious.

Dr. Simonson seemed just as concerned. He took Christopher’s pulse and then tested his mind by asking him to do sums. “He does seem to be fine,” he told the others.

“Thank goodness!” Gabriel said, rubbing his face with his hands. “Tell Flavian—no he’s out on the World Edge, isn’t he? Frederick, would you put Christopher to bed and tell the housekeeper that he’s ready for that nourishing meal now?”

Everyone was so nervous and concerned about him that Christopher realized that no one had ever tried to take someone’s spare life away before. He was not sure what he felt about that. What would they have done if it hadn’t worked? he wondered, while he was sitting in bed eating almost more chicken and cream puffs than he could hold. Frederick Parkinson sat by him while he ate, and went on sitting by him all evening. Christopher did not know which irritated him most: Frederick or the itch deep down inside him. He went to sleep early in order to get rid of both.

He woke up in the middle of the night to find himself alone in the room with the gaslight still burning. He got out of bed at once and went to see if the split in the Castle spells had been mended. To his surprise, it was still there. It looked as if nobody had realized how he went to the Anywheres. He was just about to go through the split, when he happened to look back at his bed. The boy lying there among the rumpled covers had a vague unreal look, like Tacroy before he was firmed up. The sight gave Christopher a most unpleasant jolt. He really did have only two lives left now. The last life was locked away in the Castle safe and there was no way he could use it without Gabriel’s permission. Hating Gabriel more than ever, he went back to bed.

Flavian brought Christopher his breakfast in the morning. “Are you all right for lessons today?” he asked anxiously. “I thought we could take it easy—I had a fairly heavy day yesterday, in and out of the World Edge to absolutely no effect, so I could do with a quiet morning too. I thought we’d go down to the library and look at some of the standard reference books—Moore’s
Almanac
, Prynne’s
List
and so forth.”

The itch inside Christopher had gone. He felt fine, probably better than Flavian, who looked pale and tired. He was irritated at the way everyone was keeping watch on him, but he knew there was no point in complaining, so he ate his breakfast and got dressed and went along the corridors with Flavian to the pink marble staircase.

They were halfway down the stairs when the five-pointed star in the hall filled with sudden action. Frederick Parkinson sprang into being first. He waved at Flavian. “We’ve got some of them at last!” His jubilant shout was still ringing around the hall when Miss Rosalie appeared, struggling to keep hold of an angry old woman who was trying to hit her over the head with a violin. Two policemen materialized behind her. They were carrying someone between them, one at the man’s head and one at his legs. They staggered around Miss Rosalie and the fighting old woman and laid the man carefully on the tiles, where he stayed, spread out a bit as if he was asleep, with his curly head turned peacefully towards the stairs.

Christopher found himself staring down at Tacroy.

At the same moment, Flavian said, “My God! It’s Mordecai Roberts!”

“I’m afraid so,” Frederick Parkinson called up to him. “He’s one of the Wraith gang all right. I followed him all the way into Series Seven before I went back to trace his body. He was one of their couriers. There was quite a lot of loot with him.” More policemen were appearing behind him, carrying boxes and the kind of waterproof bundles Christopher knew rather well.

Gabriel de Witt hurried past Christopher and Flavian and stood at the foot of the stairs looking down at Tacroy like a black, brooding bird. “So Roberts was their carrier, was he?” he said. “No wonder we were making no headway.” By then the hall was filled with people: more policemen, the rest of the Castle staff, footmen, the butler, and a crowd of interested housemaids. “Take him to the trance room,” Gabriel told Dr. Simonson, “but don’t let him suspect anything. I want whatever he was fetching if possible.” He turned to look up at Flavian and Christopher. “Christopher, you had better be present at the questioning when Roberts returns to his body,” he said. “It will be valuable experience for you.”

Christopher threaded his way across the hall beside Flavian, feeling rather as if he was out of his body too. He was empty with horror. So this was what Uncle Ralph’s “experiments” really were! Oh no! he thought. Let it all be a mistake!

He found it quite impossible to concentrate in the library. He kept hearing Miss Rosalie’s voice saying, “But Gabriel, they had actually butchered a whole tribe of mermaids!” and his mind kept going to those fishy bundles he had loaded on the horseless carriage in Series Five and then to the silly ladies who had thought he was something called a clistoffer. He told himself that those fishy bundles had
not
been bundles of mermaid. It
was
all some terrible mistake. But then he thought of the way Tacroy had tried to warn him off, not only the time the dragon came, but several times before that, and he knew it was no mistake. He felt sick.

Flavian was almost as bad. “Just fancy it being
Mordecai
!” he kept saying. “He’s been on the Castle staff for years. I used to
like
him!”

Both of them jumped up with a sort of relief when a footman came to fetch them to the Middle Drawing Room. At least, Christopher thought, as he followed Flavian across the hall, when everything came out nobody would expect him to be the next Chrestomanci any longer. Somehow the thought was not as comforting as he had hoped.

In the enormous drawing room, Gabriel was sitting at the center of a half circle of gilded armchairs, like an old black and gray king on his throne. To one side of him sat serious and important-looking policemen with notebooks and three men carrying briefcases who all wore whiskers more imposing than Papa’s. Flavian whispered that these were men from the Government. Miss Rosalie and the rest of Gabriel’s staff sat on the other side of the semicircle. Christopher was beckoned to a chair about halfway along. He had an excellent view when two sturdy warlock footmen brought Tacroy in and sat him in a chair facing the others.

“Mordecai Roberts,” one of the policemen said, “you are under arrest and I must warn you that anything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence later. Do you wish to have a lawyer present with you?”

“Not particularly,” said Tacroy. In his body, he was not quite the Tacroy Christopher knew. Instead of the old green suit, he was wearing a much smarter brown one, with a blue silk cravat and a handkerchief that matched it in his top pocket. His boots were handmade calf. Though his curls were exactly the same, there were lines on his face that never appeared on the face of his spirit, laughlines set in a rather insolent and bitter pattern. He was pretending to lounge in his chair with one handmade boot swinging in a carefree way, but Christopher could tell he was not carefree at all. “No point in a lawyer,” he said. “You caught me in the act after all. I’ve been a double agent for years now. There’s no way I could deny it.”