The Merlin Conspiracy by Diana Wynne Jones Page A

the way Romanov had despised me. A lot of people had called me selfish. I’d been working on it, I thought. I’d looked after Dad and been really considerate, I thought. But I could tell Romanov saw through all that, to the way I really felt . And of course I still felt selfish, in spite of the way I behaved. All the same, I was trying , and it wasn’t fair , and it wasn’t fair either that Romanov had despised me for being ignorant, too! I’d been working on that as well. I’d been reading everything I could lay hands on about magic and trying to get to other worlds and trying every way I could to persuade the bunch of people who govern the Magids—they call them the Upper Room for some reason—to let me train as a Magid, too. It wasn’t my fault they wouldn’t.
    Then I thought about Romanov himself. I would never, if I lived to be a thousand, meet anyone else as powerfully magic as Romanov. It was shattering. I’d met quite a few Magids, and they seemed quite humdrum now, compared with the stuff I’d felt coming from Romanov. It was awesome, it was just not fair , for someone to be as strong as that. Razor-edge, lightning-strike strong. It shook me to my bones.
    And those big cats shook me to my bones, too. When I found they were real …
    Hang on, I thought. This is a dream. You always put yourself through seriously nasty experiences in bad dreams. This is just a nightmare.
    Then I felt a whole heap better. I looked up and saw that the overhead lights were getting stronger orange, while the gridded holes in the walls were growing pink. It looked as if the whole day had passed. Well, I thought, dreams do like to fast-forward things. I wasn’t really surprised when, about five minutes later, Arnold came pounding up to me carrying his bag of tricks. His thick, fair face looked white and exhausted.
    â€œUp you get. Time to go,” he said. “The Prince’s own mages handle security overnight.”
    I got up, thinking in a dreamlike way that it was rather a waste that we were all taking so much trouble to guard a Prince who was going to lose his Empire and be dead before long. How had Romanov known that anyway? But dreams are like that.
    I was still thinking about this when we passed the first soldier. He looked at us enviously. “Poor beggars stay here all night in case anyone plants a bomb,” Arnold remarked. Then we came up to Chick and Arnold said, “Time up. Hotel first or eat and drink?”
    â€œFood!” Chick said, collapsing his sword to a knife and then stretching his arms out. “I’m so hungry I could eat that novice.”
    â€œI’d prefer a horse, personally,” Arnold said, and we went on round to underneath the pavilion. Dave and Pierre were already there, waiting. Arnold asked them, too, “Hotel first, or food?”
    â€œFood!” they both said, and Dave added, “And wine. Then some hot spots. Anyone know this town—know where’s good to go?”
    I watched them as they stood around discussing this. After Romanov, they struck me as simply normal people, jumped up a bit. I was a bit bored by them.
    None of them did know where to go in Marseilles, as it turned out. Nor did I, when they asked me as a last resort. So we all went out through the guarded doors underneath the pavilion into the street, and Arnold hailed a taxi. “Condweerie noo a yune bong plass a monjay,” he told the driver as we all piled in. I think he meant, Take us to a good place to eat, but it sounded like Zulu with a German accent.
    The driver seemed to understand, though. He drove off downhill toward the sea with a tremendous rattle. Even allowing for the way the streets were cobbled and how old that taxi was, I think the way its engine worked was quite different from the cars I was used to. It was ten times louder.
    But it got us there. Before long it stopped with a wild shriek and the driver said, “