Part 28 (2/2)

There were probably six hundred quiet ways of breaking this spell and sliding invisibly out of the wall, and Christopher did not know one. He wondered if he could do it by blasting loose in a combined levitation, whirlwind and fire-conjuring. Maybe-although it would be terribly hard without his hands free-and people would still come running after him with spears. He decided he would try argument and cunning first.

Before long, the G.o.ddess came in to see if he had changed his mind.

”I'll fetch it, dear,” said one of the Priestesses beyond the archway.

”No, I want to have another look at Bethi too,” the G.o.ddess said over her shoulder. For honesty's sake, she went over to look at the white cat, which was lying on her bed cus.h.i.+ons panting and looking sorry for itself. The G.o.ddess stroked it before she came over and put her face close to Christopher's.

”Well? Are you going to help me?”

”What happens,” asked Christopher, ”if one of them comes in and notices my face sticking out of the wall?”

”You'd better agree to help before they do. They'd kill you,” the G.o.ddess whispered back.

”But I wouldn't be any use to you dead,” Christopher pointed out. ”Let me go or I'll start yelling.”

”You dare!” said the G.o.ddess, and flounced out.

The trouble was Christopher did not dare. That line of argument only seemed to end in deadlock. Next time she came in, he tried a different line. ”Look,” he said, ”I really am being awfully considerate. I could easily blast a huge hole in the Temple and get away this minute, but I'm not doing it because I don't want to give you away. Asheth and your Priestesses are not going to be pleased if they find out you're trying to go to another world, are they?”

Tears flooded the G.o.ddess's eyes. ”I'm not asking very much,” she said, twisting a bangle miserably. ”I thought you were kind.”

This argument seemed to be making an impression. ”I'm going to have to blow the Temple up before long, if you don't let me go,” Christopher said. ”If I'm not back before morning, someone in the Castle is going to come in and find only one life of me lying in bed. Then they'll tell Gabriel de Witt and we'll bothbe in trouble. I told you he knows how to get to other worlds. If he comes here, you won't like it.”

”You're selfis.h.!.+” the G.o.ddess said. ”You aren't sympathetic at all-you're just scared.”

At this Christopher lost his temper. ”Let me go,” he said, ”or I'll blow the whole place sky high!”

The G.o.ddess simply ran from the room, mopping at her face with a piece of her robe.

”Is something wrong, dear?” asked a Priestess outside.

”No, no,” Christopher heard the G.o.ddess say. ”Bethi isn't very well, that's all.”

She was gone for quite a long time after that. Probably she had to distract the Priestesses from coming and looking at the white cat. But soon after that, smells of spicy food began to fill the air. Christopher grew seriously alarmed. Time was getting on and it really would be morning at the Castle soon. Then he would be in real trouble. More time pa.s.sed. He could hear people in the yard behind counting the cats and feeding them again. ”Bethi's missing,” someone said.

”She's with the Living One still,” someone else answered. ”Her kittens are due soon.”

Still more time pa.s.sed. By the time the G.o.ddess reappeared, desperation had forced Christopher's mind into quite a new tack. He saw that he would have to give her some kind of help, even if it was not what she wanted, or he would never get away before morning.

The G.o.ddess in her ruthless way was obviously meaning to be kindhearted. When she came in this time, she was carrying a spicy pancake-thing wrapped around hot meat and vegetables. She tore bits off it and popped them into Christopher's mouth. There was some searing kind of pepper in it. His eyes watered.

”Listen,” he choked. ”What's really the matter with you? What made you suddenly decide to make me help you?”

”I told you!” the G.o.ddess said impatiently. ”It was what you said when I was ill-that I wasn't going to be the Living Asheth when I grow up. After that I couldn't think of anything else but what was going to happen to me then.”

”So you want to know for certain?” Christopher said.

”More than anything else in this world!” the G.o.ddess said.

”Then will you let me go if I help you find out what's really going to happen to you?” Christopher bargained. ”I can't take you to my world-you know I can't-but I can help you this way.”

The G.o.ddess stood twisting the last piece of pancake about in her fingers. ”Yes,” she said. ”All right. But I can't see how you can find out any better than I can.”

”I can,” said Christopher. ”What you have to do is go and stand in front of that golden statue of Asheth you showed me and ask it what's going to happen to you when you stop being the Living Asheth. If it doesn't say anything, you'll know nothing much is going to happen and you'll be able to leave this Temple and go to school.” This struck him as pretty cunning, since there was no way that he could see that a golden statue could talk.

”Now why didn't I think of that!” the G.o.ddess exclaimed. ”That's clever! But-” She twisted the piece of pancake about again. ”But Asheth doesn't talk, you know, not exactly. She does everything by signs.

Portents and omens and things. And she doesn't always give one when people ask.” This was annoying. ”But she'll give you one,” Christopher said persuasively. ”You're supposed to be her, after all, so it only amounts to asking her to remind you of something both of you know already. Go and tell her to do you a portent-only make her put a time limit on it, so that if there isn't one, you'll know that there isn't.”

”I will,” said the G.o.ddess 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-c.h.i.n.k, chank-c.h.i.n.k, 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 G.o.ddess 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 G.o.ddess. ”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 G.o.ddess 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 G.o.ddess'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 G.o.ddess sat on her cus.h.i.+ons, 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 G.o.ddess 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 cus.h.i.+ons 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 G.o.ddess 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 G.o.ddess. ”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 G.o.ddess surged off her cus.h.i.+ons 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 G.o.ddess, 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.

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