"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, pushing 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.

They kept it there when they sent me here to Twelve as a baby."

Christopher stared at Tacroy. He had always known that Tacroy did not look quite like other people, with his coffee-colored skin and curly hair, but he had not thought about it before because he had met so many stranger people in the Anywheres.

"Why did they send you?"

"To be their guinea pig," said Tacroy. "The Dright puts someone in another world from time to time when he wants to study it. This time he decided he wanted to study good and evil, so he ordered me to work for Gabriel first and then for the worst villain he could find-who happened to be your uncle. They don't go by right and wrong in Eleven. They don't consider themselves human-Or no, I suppose they think they're the only real people, and they study the rest of you like something in a zoo when the Dright happens to feel interested."

Christopher could tell from Tacroy's voice that he hated the Eleven people very deeply. He well understood that. Tacroy was even worse off than the G.o.ddess. "Who's the Dright?"

"King, priest, chief magician-" Tacroy shrugged. "No, he's not quite any of those, quite. He's called High Father of the Sept and he's thousands of years old. He's lived that long because he eats someone's soul whenever his power fails-but he's quite within his rights, doing that. All the Eleven people and their souls belong to him by Eleven law. I belong to him."

"What's the law about him fetching himself all Gabriel's lives?" Christopher asked. "That's what he's done, hasn't he?"

"I knew he had-as soon as Flavian said 'Series Eleven,'" Tacroy said. "I know he's always wanted to study someone with nine lives. They can't get them in Eleven, because there's only one world there, not a Series. The Dright keeps it down to one world so he won't have any rivals. And you know your nine lives came about-don't you?-because all the doubles you might have had in the other worlds in Twelve never got born for some reason."

"Yes, but what's Eleven law about pinching most of an enchanter?" Christopher insisted.

"I'm not sure," Tacroy confessed. "I'm not sure they have laws like we do. It's probably legal if the Dright can get away with it. They go by pride and appearance and what people do mostly."

Christopher at once resolved that the Dright should not get away with this if he could help it. "I suppose he just waited to see how many lives there were loose and then collected them," he said. "Tell me everything about Eleven that you can think of."

"Well," said Tacroy, "I haven't been there since I was born, but I know they control everything with magic. They have the weather controlled, so that they can live out in the open forest and control what trees grow and where. Food comes when they call and they don't use fire to cook it. They don't use fire at all. They think you're all savages for using it, and they're just as scornful about the kind of magic all theother worlds use. The only time they think any of you are any good is when one of you is absolutely loyal to a king or chief or someone. They admire people like that, particularly if they cheat and lie out of loyalty. . . ."

Tacroy talked for the next half hour. He talked as if it was a relief for him to tell it at last, but Christopher could see it was a strain too. Halfway through, when the lines on Tacroy's face made him look haggard, Christopher told him to wait and slipped out of the secrecy spell to the door. As he had expected, Miss Rosalie was standing outside looking more than usually fierce.

"Mordecai's worked himself to the bone for you, one way and another!" she hissed at him. "What are you doing to him in there?"

"Nothing, but he needs something to keep him going," Christopher said. "Could you-?"

"What do you take me for?" snapped Miss Rosalie. Erica rushed up with a tray almost at once. As well as tea, and two plates piled high with cakes, there was a tiny bottle of brandy nestling in the corner of the tray. When Christopher carried the tray back inside the spell, Tacroy looked at the brandy, grinned, and poured a good dollop of it into his cup of tea. It seemed to revive him as much as the cakes revived Christopher. While they polished off the trayful together, Tacroy thought of a whole new set of things to say.

One of the things he said was, "If you saw some Eleven people without being warned, you might take them for n.o.ble savages, but you'd be making a big mistake if you did. They're very, very civilized. As for being n.o.ble-" Tacroy paused with a cake halfway to his mouth.

"Eat your elevenses," said Christopher.

Tacroy gave a brief grin at the joke. "Your worlds know about them a bit," he said. "They're the people who gave rise to all the stories about Elves. If you think about them like that-cold, unearthly people who go by quite different rules- that will give you some idea. I don't understand them really, even though I was born one of them."

By this time Christopher knew that getting Gabriel back was going to be the toughest thing he had ever done in his lives. If it was not impossible. "Can you bear to come to Eleven with me?" he asked Tacroy.

"To stop me making mistakes."

"As soon as they realize I've told you, they'll haul me back there anyway," Tacroy said. He was very pale again. "And you're in danger for knowing."

"In that case," said Christopher, "we'll tell everyone in the Castle, and get Yolande and Beryl to type a report to the Government about it. The Dright can't kill everyone."

Tacroy did not look any too sure about this, but he went back with Christopher to the operations room to explain. Naturally, it caused another outcry. "Eleven!" everyone exclaimed. "You can't!" People crowded in from the rest of the Castle to tell Christopher he was being a fool and that getting Gabriel back was quite impossible. Dr. Simonson left off making final adjustments to the Lobster Pot to march upstairs and forbid Christopher to go.

Christopher had expected this. "Fudge!" he said. "You can catch the Wraith without me now."

What he had not expected was that the G.o.ddess would wait for the clamor to die down and then announce, "And I'm coming with you."

"Why?" said Christopher. "Out of loyalty," the G.o.ddess explained. "In the Millie books, Millie never let her chums down."

There was no accounting for the G.o.ddess's obsession, Christopher thought. He suspected she was really afraid to stay where the Arm of Asheth could find her on her own, but he did not say so. And if she came along, she would almost double the amount of magic they had between them.

Then, on Tacroy's advice, he dressed for the journey. "Fur," Tacroy said. "The more you wear, the higher your rank." Christopher conjured the tigerskin rug from the Middle Saloon and the G.o.ddess cut a hole in it for his head. Miss Rosalie found him a lordly belt with great bra.s.s studs in it to go around the middle, while the housekeeper produced a fox fur to wrap around his neck and a mink stole for the G.o.ddess. "And it would help to have it hung all over with ornaments," said Tacroy.

"Not silver ones, remember," Christopher called as everyone rushed away to find things.

He ended up with three gold necklaces and a rope of pearls. Yolande's entire stock of earrings was pinned artfully here and there on the tigerskin, with Beryl's brooches in between. Around his head he had Miss Rosalie's gold evening belt with Erica's mother's mourning brooch pinned to the front of it over his forehead. He c.h.i.n.ked in a stately way when he moved, rather like the G.o.ddess in the Temple. The G.o.ddess herself merely had a cl.u.s.ter of ostrich feathers at the front of her head and somebody's gold bracelets around the bottom of her Norfolk breeches. They wanted to make it clear that Christopher was the most important one. Tacroy stayed just as he was. "They know me," he said. "I have no rank in the Sept at all."

They shook hands with everyone in the operations room and turned to the Gate. It was now tuned to Eleven as far as Flavian and Tacroy knew, but Miss Rosalie warned Christopher that the spells around Eleven would probably take all their strength to break, and even that might not be enough. So Christopher paced, c.h.i.n.king in the lead, pushing with all his might, and the G.o.ddess walked after with her ghostly pair of arms spread under the real pair. Behind them, Tacroy muttered an incantation.

And it was easy. Suspiciously easy, they all felt at once. There was an instant of formlessness, like one short breath of The Place Between. Then they were in a forest and a man who looked like Tacroy was staring at them.

The forest was smoothly beautiful, with a green gra.s.sy floor and no bushes of any kind. There were simply tall slender trees that all seemed to be the same kind. Among the smooth and slightly shiny trunks, the man was poised on one foot, something like a startled deer, looking over his naked brown shoulder at them. He was like Tacroy in that he had the same sort of coffee-colored skin and paler curly hair, but there the likeness ended. He was naked except for a short fur skirt, which made him look like a particularly stylish Greek statue, apart from his face. The expression on the man's face reminded Christopher of a camel. It was all haughty dislike and scorn.

"Call him. Remember what I told you," Tacroy whispered.

You had to be rude to Eleven people or they did not respect you. "Hey, you!" Christopher called out in the most lordly way he could. "You there! Take me to the Dright at once!"

The man behaved as if he had not heard. After staring a second longer, he took the step he had been in the middle of and walked away among the trees.

"Didn't he hear?" asked the G.o.ddess.

"Probably," said Tacroy. "But he wanted to make it clear he was more important than you. He was obviously low in the Sept. Even the lowest ones like to think they're better than anyone else in theRelated Worlds. Walk on, and we'll see if anything comes of it."

"Which way?" asked Christopher.

"Any way," said Tacroy, with a slight smile. "They control distance and direction here."

They walked forward the way they were facing. The trees were all so much the same and so evenly s.p.a.ced that, after about twenty steps, Christopher wondered if they were moving at all. He looked around and was relieved to see the square frame of the Gate among the tree-trunks about the right distance behind. He wondered if the whole of Eleven was covered with trees. If it was, it was hardly surprising that its people did not use fire. They would risk burning the whole forest down. He looked to the front again and found that, without any change in the landscape, they were somehow walking towards a fence.

The fence stretched for as far as they could see into the trees on either side. It was made of stakes of wood, nicely varnished and wickedly pointed on top, driven into the turf about a foot apart. The points at the top only came to Tacroy's waist. It did not look much of a barrier. But when they turned sideways to get between the stakes, the stakes seemed much too close together to let them through. When Tacroy took his jacket off to cover the points on top so that they could climb over, his jacket would not go anywhere that was not their side of the fence. As Tacroy picked his jacket up for the sixth time, the G.o.ddess looked to the left and Christopher looked to the right, and they discovered that the fence was now all around them. Behind them, there was no sign of the Gate among the trees-nothing but a row of stakes blocking the way back.

"He did hear," said the G.o.ddess.

"I think they were expecting us," said Christopher.

Tacroy spread his jacket on the gra.s.s and sat on it. "We'll just have to wait and see," he said glumly.

"No, not you," he said to Christopher as Christopher started to sit down too. "The important people always stand here. I was told that the Dright hasn't sat down for years."

The G.o.ddess sank down beside Tacroy and rubbed her bare toes in the gra.s.s. "Then I'm not going to be important," she said. "I'm sick of being important anyway. I say! Was he here before?"