Part 33 (1/2)

”Your face was rather a study,” the G.o.ddess said, with a weak chuckle. ”You should have seen the relief on it when they hauled it up again!” The G.o.ddess was not at all happy. She was pale and nervous in spite of trying to joke.

She has only one life, Christopher reminded himself, and the Arm of Asheth is waiting outside for her.

”Why don't you come with me to collect Gabriel's lives?” he said. ”It will puzzle the Arm of Asheth no end if you start hopping from world to world.”

”Oh may I?” the G.o.ddess said gladly. ”I feel so responsible.”

There had been much discussion, some of it very learned, among Flavian, Beryl, Yolande and Mr.

Wilkinson about how to collect Gabriel's lives. Christopher had no idea there were so many ways to send people to different worlds. Miss Rosalie settled it by saying briskly, ”We set up a Gate here in this room and send Mordecai into a trance with a spirit-trace so that we can focus the Gate on him as soon as he finds a Gabriel. Then Christopher and Millie go through and persuade the Gabriel that he's needed at the Castle. What could be simpler?”

Many things could have been simpler, Christopher thought, as he and the G.o.ddess worked on the complex magics of the Gate to Flavian's endless, patient instructions. He felt slow and reluctant anyway.

Even though only Gabriel could give him his ninth life back, even though Gabriel was desperately needed, Christopher did not want him back. All the fun would end then. Everything in the Castle would go quiet and respectable and grown-up again. Only the fact that he always liked working on magic that really did something kept Christopher working properly on the Gate.

When it was finished, the Gate looked simple indeed. It was a tall square frame of metal, with two mirrors sloping together to make a triangle at the back of it. No one would know, to look at it, howdifficult it had been to do.

Christopher left Tacroy lying on the couch with the little blue blob of the spirit-trace on his forehead and went, rather moodily, to conjure the baker's cart into the Castle grounds. This is the last time they'll let me do this, he thought, as the Arm of Asheth angrily shook their spears at the baker.

When he came back, Tacroy was pale and still and covered with blankets and Miss Rosalie was gently playing her harp.

”There he is in the Gate,” Flavian said.

The two mirrors had become one slightly misty picture of somewhere in Series One. Christopher could see a line of the great pylons that carried the ring trains stretching away into the distance. Tacroy was standing under the nearest one, wearing the green suit Christopher knew so well. It must be what Tacroy's spirit always wore. The spirit had its hands spread out frustratedly.

”Something seems to be wrong,” Flavian said.

Everyone jumped when the body lying on the couch spoke suddenly, in a strange, husky voice. ”I had him!” Tacroy's body said. ”He was watching the trains. He was just telling me he could invent a better train. Then he simply vanished! What do I do?”

”Go and try for the Gabriel in Series Two,” Miss Rosalie said, plucking a rippling, soothing tune.

”It'll take a moment,” Tacroy's body croaked.

The picture in the Gate vanished. Christopher imagined Tacroy scrambling and wafting through The Place Between. Everyone around him wondered anxiously what had gone wrong.

”Maybe Gabriel's lives just don't trust Mordecai,” Flavian suggested.

The mirrors combined into a picture again. This time they all saw Gabriel's life. It was standing on a hump-backed bridge, gazing down into the river below. It was surprisingly frail and bent and old, so old that Christopher realized that the Gabriel he knew was nothing like as elderly as he had thought. Tacroy's spirit was there too, edging gently up the hump of the bridge towards Gabriel's life, for all the world like Throgmorten stalking a big black bird. Gabriel did not seem to see Tacroy. He did not look around. But his bent black figure was suddenly not there anymore. There was only Tacroy on the bridge, staring at the place where Gabriel had been.

”That one went, too,” Tacroy's body uttered from the couch. ”What is this?”

”Hold it!” Flavian whispered and ran to check the nearest divining spells.

”Stay there a moment, Mordecai,” Miss Rosalie said gently.

In the mirrors, Tacroy's spirit leaned its elbows on the bridge and tried to look patient.

”I don't believe this!” Flavian cried out. ”Everyone check, quickly! All the lives seem to be disappearing!

Better call Mordecai back, Rosalie, or he'll waste his strength for nothing.”

There was a rush for the crystals, bowls, mirrors and scrying pools. Miss Rosalie swept both hands across her harp and, inside the Gate, Tacroy's spirit looked up, looked surprised, and vanished as suddenly as Gabriel's life. Miss Rosalie leaned over and watched anxiously as Tacroy's body stirred.

Color flooded back to his face. His eyes opened. ”What's going on?” he said, pus.h.i.+ng the blankets back. ”We've no idea,” said Miss Rosalie. ”All the Gabriels are disappearing-”

”No they're not!” Flavian called excitedly.

”They're all collecting into a bunch, and they're coming this way, the lot of them!”

There was a tense half hour, during which everyone's hopes and fears seesawed. Since Christopher's hopes and fears on the whole went the opposite way to everyone else's, he thought he could not have borne it without Proudfoot the kitten. Erica brought Proudfoot with her when she hurried in with a tray of tea to restore Tacroy. Proudfoot became very busy taking her first long walk, all the way under Gabriel's black desk, with her string of a tail whipping about for balance. She was something much better to watch than the queer clots and whorls that Gabriel's lives made as they drifted steadily towards Series Twelve.

Christopher was watching Proudfoot when Flavian said, ”Oh dear!” and turned away from the scrying pool.

”What's the matter?” he asked.

Flavian's shoulders drooped. He tore off his tight, crumpled collar and threw it on the floor. ”All the lives have stopped,” he said. ”They're faint but certain. They're in Series Eleven, I'm afraid. I think that was where the seventh life was all along. So much for our hopes!”

”Why?” said Christopher.

”n.o.body can get there, dear,” said Miss Rosalie. She looked as if she might cry. ”At least, n.o.body ever comes back from there if they do.”

Christopher looked at Tacroy. Tacroy had gone pale, paler even than when he went in a trance. He was the color of milk with a dash of coffee in it.

20.

Here was the perfect excuse to stop looking for Gabriel. Christopher expected to have a short struggle with himself. He quite took himself by surprise when he stood up straightaway. He did not even have to think that the G.o.ddess had also heard Tacroy confess that part of himself was in Series Eleven. ”Tacroy,”

he said. He knew it was important to call Tacroy by his spirit name. ”Tacroy, come to that empty office for a moment. I have to talk to you.”

Slowly and reluctantly Tacroy stood up. Miss Rosalie said sharply, ”Mordecai, you look ill. Do you want me to come with you?”

”No!” Tacroy and Christopher said together.

Tacroy sat on the edge of a desk in the empty office and put his face in his hands. Christopher was sorry for him. He had to remind himself that he and Tacroy were the ones who had brought Uncle Ralph the weapon which had blown Gabriel's lives apart, before he could say, ”I've got to ask you.”

”I know that,” Tacroy said.

”So what is it about Series Eleven?” said Christopher.

Tacroy raised his head. ”Put the strongest spell of silence and privacy around us that you can,” he said.

Christopher did so, even more fiercely than he had done for Miss Bell and Mama. It was so extreme that he went numb and could hardly feel to sc.r.a.pe out the center of the spell so that he and Tacroy could hear one another. When he had done it, he was fairly sure that even someone standing just beside them couldnot have overheard a word. But Tacroy shrugged. ”They can probably hear anyway,” he said. ”Their magic's nothing like ours. And they have my soul, you see. They know most of what I do from that, and what they don't know I have to go and report to them in spirit. You saw me going there once-they summon me to a place near Covent Garden.”

”Your soul?” said Christopher.

”Yes,” Tacroy said bitterly. ”The part that makes you the person you are. With you, it's the part that carries on from life to life. Mine was detached from me when I was born, as it is with all Eleven people.