Gwyneth knocked sharply on Bronwyn’s
door. She was even more grumpy than
usual. She had spent the last night reading a report on Eth City politics from
Elizabeth, and the report had been so full of dry statistics that it taken her
until well after midnight to finish it. Nothing had changed in the city either,
and so she might as well have just remembered what was in the previous report.
She got to sleep at just after one
and then was woken at just before seven by Celia’s sirada spell. Six hours sleep was really not enough and now she was
determined to get her sister up too. She saw no reason why she shouldn’t share
the pain. Anyway, she was sure that it had been Bronwyn’s turn to have the damn
pentangle in her room that night…
Bronwyn’s voice came from behind the
door
‘Who is it?’ she said sleepily.
‘It’s me – who do you think it is?’
‘It’s really early… what’s the
matter?’
‘I’ve just had a sirada with Celia – she’s worried about Laurence’
Gwyneth could hear the sound of
Bronwyn’s rapid exit from her bed. There was a brief kerfuffle in the bedroom
and the door opened: Bronwyn was wrapped in her purple floral dressing gown,
the one that had huge roses on it. Gwyneth knew that it had been a present from
John, but that didn’t make it any less vulgar.
Bronwyn looked flustered and spoke
very rapidly.
‘Why does Celia think that Laurence
is in trouble?’
‘Because Boo came back, unbidden’
‘Oh no’
‘Exactly – so let’s go out and see if
we can get hold of Laurence’
Ten minutes later they were dressed and
outside, standing next to the Sigla,
the flat expanse of rock where, except at night, they chalked out the
communication pentangle. This rock was charged with magical energy at every
coven meeting by a massive chyfnertha
(‘aid’) spell. This gave the twins the power to communicate directly with any
Hybitor council member, and, of course, with Hardacre.
It was Bronwyn’s turn to chalk out the
pentangle and she did this rapidly, far more quickly than was usual. Then
Gwyneth called up the link to Hardacre, and they waited. This would take longer
than usual because Hardacre was not in his usual locale. The spell had to use
the magical trace that he left behind him, in a similar but slightly more
sophisticated way, they had always supposed, to Boo’s ability to track powerful
magic. The major limitation of the method is that it could not detect anyone
who did not use magic, or anyone that had not used magic where they were for a
day or two. Their assumption was that if Hardacre was in real trouble then he
would have used magic recently, or, even better, he would have teleported
recently, which left a huge signal at the exit end.
This time, however, it was proving
very hard to contact him. Bronwyn peered into the circle, her forehead furrowed
with concern. The space where Hardacre should be was totally black.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Bronwyn
‘I’m not sure’ said Gwyneth,
‘something odd is happening’
A voice came out of the darkness –
very high and very fast.
‘whoistherewhatisgoingonisthatbronwyninbagIamhere’
It sounded like Hardacre speeded up
several times. The only time Bronwyn had heard anything like this before was at
the University in Eth City, when some of her friends had experimented with
‘magic mushrooms’
‘Laurence’ said Bronwyn, ‘is that
you?’
‘whydoyospeaksoslowlyifindithardtounder’
said the voice
‘Where are you?’ said Gwyneth,
speaking as quickly as she could.
‘inbaginmultidimbag-youneedtospeakmorequickly’
Hardacre’s voice got higher and
higher and faster and faster until it was too painful to listen to. Gwyneth
impatiently scuffed a line on the pentangle and the grating noise stopped.
‘Ahh’ said Gwyneth, ‘that makes
sense, I suppose’
‘What?’ asked Bronwyn, completely
bewildered, ‘what is going on?’.
‘He’s inside his extra-dimensional
bag. You know what those things are like: they play havoc with the time’
‘They do’ agreed Bronwyn, ‘you’d have
to be desperate to climb inside one..’
‘And, of course, it’s impossible to
trace properly, as it’s outside normal time and space…’
‘And clearly very hard to keep a good
communication signal going’
They stood for a moment, in thought.
‘Let’s try again’ said Gwyneth,
without enthusiasm, ‘we might be lucky this time, you never know’
They re-chalked the pentangle and
stared into the dark space. This time the sound inside the bag had a very
different quality, as if an incredibly localised thunderstorm was resident in
the space. The twins put their hands up to their ears again.
‘Laurence – what has happened’ asked
Bronwyn speaking as fast as she could.
Gwyneth gave her a withering stare
and shook her head, exasperated.
‘Wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh000000000000000000’
This boom was so loud that this time Bronwyn
kicked at the pentagram to turn it off.
‘Oh dear’ she said, ‘this is not good
at all’
Gwyneth sighed, but was kind enough
to give her twin a sympathetic tilt of the head.
‘We’ll just have to hope that he can
get out of the bag soon and send a sensible signal. In the meantime, we’d
better sit by the pentangle in shifts, just in case’
Bronwyn nodded and settled down to
sit on the stone bench by the circle. She was happy to stay as long as it took.
‘So – it looks like you’re keen to
take first shift’ said Gwyneth, ‘but first, we must speak to John’
Bronwyn nodded again, this time
rather less certainly.
‘Maybe he’ll know what to do’ she
said
‘Don’t rely on it’ said Gwyneth, as
she chalked the pentangle out once again, ‘this one may not be easy to fix’
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