Tracked by Terror (10 page)

He couldn't, but Betsy dragged one of the wooden crates over for him to stand on, and with its added height, Jarvey just managed to slide the Grimoire on top of the middle rafter. You couldn't even see it from floor level. He jumped down. “Will that do?”

“Perfect,” she said, dusting her hands. “Now let's go hunting.”

Before noon had come, they had found out several things. The town they were in was called Port Midion. The people looked vaguely Indian, with dark complexions and odd clothing, though they sounded completely British. Animals walked freely in the streets: An odd-looking cow with a hump on its back passed them by, and a troupe of monkeys playing some kind of chase game tumbled screeching across the rooftops overhead. They passed some prosperous-looking houses, and Betsy deftly found them new outfits, taken one piece at a time from clothes-lines. Before long, both of them wore the local costume, loose-fitting white slipover shirts and trousers.

Best of all, they wandered to a spot with jetting fountains where a host of kids their age and younger splashed and played, and they waded in. It was the first bath Jarvey had ever taken with all his clothes on, but it felt wonderful anyway. Betsy chatted with the kids. Jarvey admired her knack of sounding right at home and cheerful, no matter where she was. Later, after they had left the fountains behind and had walked through the sunny streets until they were reasonably dry again, she said to Jarvey, “Can't quite make out what's what. This isn't as bad as Lunnon, that's plain. Somebody calls himself the Nawab is the lord and master here, but they don't seem to be all that afraid of him. Guess he's a relative of yours.”

Jarvey frowned. “I didn't ask to be born a Midion.”

“I know. Come on, don't be like that. After all, we're cousins, you know. My grandfather's a Midion.” Betsy jerked her head back toward the fountains. “Kids back there didn't know anything about new people in town, but then, they don't know much of anything about the Nawab's doin's, nor even his right name. We'll have to sneak about a little, I think, and keep our ears open. See if this Nawab is your Siyamon Midion or not.”

“Do you think he is?”

Betsy sighed, sounding a little irritable. “How should I know? If your Siyamon is like the other Midions, he was writing himself a nice little chapter, wasn't he? Could be he wants to be the ruler of this kind of world. Could be someone else. All I know is that if he's here, your mum and dad are probably not too far away.”

“I don't think he could be,” Jarvey said slowly. “This place doesn't feel like something from my time.”

Betsy shrugged. “Crazy magician can make it feel like anything he wants,” she said. “I wish—”

A blare of trumpets cut her off They had emerged from an alley back onto what seemed to be the main street of the town, a broad cobbled thoroughfare lined with shops. People rushed to get out of the way as a dozen huge men came lurching down the street, preceded by two who sounded trumpets.

Except when they came closer, Jarvey saw they weren't men at all.

“Blimey!” Betsy said.

The creatures that passed by all wore armor and carried spears. But they weren't human.

They were gorillas, walking stooped but on two legs, their heavy heads swinging from side to side and their deep-set brown eyes glaring at the crowd as they passed. As soon as they had gone by, the people seemed to let out a collective sigh of relief, and they went back to their business.

“What was that all about?” Jarvey asked.

“Dunno,” Betsy said. “Maybe the Midion that runs this place don't trust men to be his bodyguards. What were those things?”

“Apes,” Jarvey said. “Gorillas.”

She stared at him, and he realized that on Lunnon there had been no apes. Lunnon had few animals other than cows, pigs, sheep, horses, and dogs. He said, “On Earth, they're creatures from the jungles of Africa. They're stronger than humans, but they're just animals. I mean, they don't dress up in armor and carry weapons. They don't have a language and they can't learn to talk.”

“Do they play horns?”

“Huh? Oh, the bugles. No, not the ones on Earth,” he said.

They had been walking up a long, gentle slope leading away from the docks, and now they came to a wide market square. Booths all around the edges of it offered everything from fruits and vegetables to carved decorations and clothing. At the center of the square a sort of bulletin board, protected by an overhanging roof, had been built, and men and women paused to read the posters tacked up on it. Jarvey and Betsy paused before this and Jarvey looked at what seemed to be the most recent poster:

“I don't like the sound of that,” Jarvey said. “ ‘You have been warned.' What does he do, hunt with cannons or something?”

“We'll have to be careful, looks like,” agreed Betsy.

The rest of the day went reasonably well. They got some sense of the world: Midion seemed to be the one important city, but the ships went to and from other settlements, exchanging goods and bringing supplies and luxuries into port. The people in town seemed friendly enough, though wrapped up in their own concerns and not particularly outgoing. Now dressed just like the local inhabitants, Jarvey and Betsy fit in well enough. They wore not only the loose tunics and trousers, but also comfortable sandals, thanks to Betsy's talent at slipping things away while shopkeepers were not looking. No one gave them a second glance.

Betsy was not shy about striking up conversations with strangers, and once when she was talking to a boy who was maybe seven or eight years old, she asked, “So who's the Nawab, then?”

The kid had given her a quizzical glance, his head tilted on one side. “Who's the Nawab? What d'you mean?”

“What's his name?” she asked.

The boy shrugged. “The Nawab, is all. Lives in the palace, owns everything. That's all.”

“Where's the palace, then?”

With a snort of laughter, the boy said, “You don't know much, do you? 'S on the hilltop, 'course!”

And that was a help, because the streets of Midion were all very level, all except one. The main street sloped up from the waterfront right through the center of town. They followed it until it ended at the entrance to a green park. A wrought-iron fence taller than Jarvey surrounded the park, and over the tops of the trees three golden onion-domed towers were visible. “That must be the place,” Jarvey said. “The palace, where the Nawab lives.”

“But we're not going in there,” Betsy told him.

He looked ahead. The street ended at the open park gate, but a grassy lane led forward through an avenue of trees and climbed a hill. Jarvey couldn't see anyone walking around in the park at all, but that had to be the way to the palace. “Why not?”

“ 'Cause look.”

Jarvey followed her pointing finger and felt a little sick at what he saw. He had not noticed them before because they blended in so well with the yellow and green grass beside the lane, but now he spotted them. They lay very quietly, very still. You might have mistaken them for a couple of tree branches that had fallen to the ground and that had been carelessly tossed off the pathway.

But they weren't branches. They were snakes, two of them, at least eight feet long each, a mottled greenish-gray. As Jarvey stared at them, they reared, both at once, and spread out their hoods.

Jarvey's heart thumped like a drum. Twenty feet away from him two deadly cobras, their bodies nearly as thick as one of his legs, stared right into his eyes.

“Let's go,” Betsy said, tugging at the tail of his tunic.

Jarvey backed away, unwilling to let the deadly creatures out of his sight. They swayed, their heads three feet off the ground, as they watched the two retreat. Finally, when they had gone a good distance, Jarvey forced himself to look ahead, not back at the serpents. “Nice watchdogs,” he said.

“And what were they?”

Jarvey explained about cobras. He finished up, “They're about the deadliest snake in the world. If they bite you, you re a goner.

Betsy was frowning. “I didn't know what to call them, but I knew they were evil. Looked like dragons, sort of, in the old stories they tell in Lunnon. Can they be tamed?”

Jarvey shook his head. “I don't think so. But then, gorillas can't be tamed either. These must be—I don't know, magicked or something.”

Betsy shivered. “I don't like those things. I'll feel better when we're farther away.”

“So will I.”

They managed to find another meal. At least, Jarvey thought, this world was richer in its rewards than Junius's theater. The food here was cooked, hot and savory, and satisfyingly filling. Betsy took two shallow wooden bowls from one shop, then in another managed to find them some kind of rice and chicken dish, and finally some bread. They got back to the hut, sneaked in, and talked about what they should do as they ate.

“I think we ought to get a look at this Nawab if we can,” Betsy said. “If it's not your Siyamon, we can get out of here and try somewhere else.”

“I don't know. Maybe we can find out whether the Nawab is always here or if he comes and goes a lot.”

“What good would that do?” Betsy asked, munching some bread.

Jarvey frowned in concentration. “I was in his house back on Earth. It looked like he had tons of stuff there that he'd want to bring with him wherever he ended up. If he's the Nawab, he's probably still spending a good part of his time on Earth.”

Betsy was cleaning out her wooden bowl by swabbing a piece of bread over it. She popped the bread into her mouth and said, “That could be the reason the people here don't seem terrified so much as they were in Lunnon. Maybe the Nawab's just a part-time tyrant, like.”

Jarvey thought for a long moment. “Maybe. I just wish I could open up the Grimoire and read the last chapter. Then I'd know one way or the other. But every time I open it—”

“You get pulled into another world,” Betsy said, setting her bowl down on the crate they had used as a table.

Jarvey nodded. “Yeah. It's like the book hates me and forces me off the track. I don't know what to do about it.”

“Zoroaster told you you'd have to learn to use it for one purpose only. To save your parents.”

“But I can't learn,” Jarvey said miserably. “I can't practice, because it yanks me off into some other chapter every time I try to open it. And I don't know any magic. The thing is hundreds of years old. It was made by dozens of evil magicians. It's stronger than I am.”

“You didn't think you could make a candle either,” Betsy pointed out.

Jarvey bit back the words that nearly rushed out. He almost told her that what gave him the ability to create the candle was not magic, but anger and humiliation. He wondered if all the Midion wizards felt the same. Junius Midion, from what he had heard, was furious because the world didn't think he was a very good actor or playwright, and so out of his anger, he created his own warped world, where he was everything he dreamed of being, at least to the ghostly, sad throng of imaginary people who made up his audience. Old Tantalus Midion wanted to be obeyed and feared. He hated people, and from his hatred he made Lunnon, a warped reflection of the London of his own century.

Did hatred and anger hold the key to the book's magic, then? If he simply became desperate enough, mad enough, would he be able to use the Grimoire?

He remembered Zoroaster's refusal to touch the book. “It would corrupt and ruin me,” Zoroaster had said. The Grimoire was just a book, but it was a book that had a kind of spirit of its own. Like a living thing, it fought back and tried to change the person using it. Even someone who was basically good, Zoroaster had warned, could fall prey to the Grimoire's temptations.

Still, if you used it to free people, not to enslave them, if you used it to help your parents and yourself... Jarvey sighed. “Let's try to find out just who the Nawab is,” he said at last. “If it's Siyamon, we stay. If it isn't, we try the book again.”

“Right,” Betsy said. She stretched. “Tell me some more about that game you played on Earth. Bias ball?”

Despite everything, Jarvey chuckled. “Baseball,” he said. “It's kind of like cricket. But not really.” He had read a little about cricket on his first and only day in London, and what he had read made absolutely no sense. “Okay, there are nine on a team in baseball. It's played on a field shaped like a diamond ...” He talked on and on, sketching out a baseball diamond in the dust atop one of the crates, standing to show Betsy how a pitcher wound up and threw the ball and how a batter got into the proper stance to swing at it.