Year of the Griffin. Diana Wynne Jones

pentagram of books, this being all the candles in the sack. Because no one knew how to conjure fire to light them yet, Ruskin lit them all with his flint lighter. Then they stood, one at each point of the pentagram, passing books from hand to hand to talon, reciting rhymes, shouting words of power and attempting to make the gestures in the illustrations. One spell required Elda to hunt out her hand mirror and pass that around too, carefully facing the glass outwards to reflect enemy attacks away from Felim. In between spellings, they all looked anxiously at Felim, but he sat there stoically upright and did not seem to be coming to any harm.

      “You will yell if it hurts or anything, won’t you?” each of them said more than once.

      “It does not – although I feel rather warm at times,” Felim replied.

      So they went doggedly on through all six books. It took slightly less than an hour, because a number of the spells were in more than one book and some, like the mirror spell, were in all six. Nevertheless, by the end they all suddenly found they were exhausted. Elda said the last incantation and sank down on her haunches. The rest simply folded where they stood and sat panting on the carpet.

      Here a truly odd thing occurred. All ninety-nine candles burned down at once, sank into puddles of wax on the carpet and flickered out. While Elda was looking sadly at the mess, she saw, out of the end of her left eye, that Felim seemed to be shining. When she whipped her head round to look at him properly, Felim looked quite normal, but when she turned the corner of her other eye towards him, he was shining again, like a young man-shaped lantern, glowing from within. His red sash looked particularly remarkable, and so did his eyes.

      Around the pentagram, the others were discovering the same thing. Everyone thought they might be imagining it and no one liked to mention it, until Olga said cautiously, “Does anyone see what I see?”

      “Yes,” said Claudia. “My guess is that we’ve discovered witch-sight. Felim, can you see yourself glowing?”

      “I have always had witch-sight,” Felim said, “but I hope this effect does not last. I feel like a beacon. May I wash the chalk off now?” But the coloured pentagrams had gone. Felim held out both hands to show everyone.

      “It’s worked!” Lukin slapped his own leg in delight. “We did it. We make a good team.”

      They were so pleased that much of their tiredness left them. Felim climbed rather stiffly from among the books and they celebrated by eating oranges and the last of the food in the other hamper. Then, still munching, they took up books from the pentagram to find out ways to trap the assassins before they got near Felim.

      “My brother Kit would call this overkill,” Elda remarked.

      “Overkill is what we’re going for,” said Lukin as he rapidly opened a whole row of books. “Doubled and redoubled safety. Oh-oh. Difficulty. About half these need to be set to particular times. We have to time them for when the assassins actually get here,”

      “That’s all right,” Claudia said, peeling her sixth orange. “Oh, Elda, I do love oranges. Even Titus never has this many. We can work out when they’ll get here. Felim, how long did you take on the way?”

      Felim smiled. The glow was fading from him, but his confidence seemed to grow as it faded. “Nearly three weeks. But I took a poor horse and devious ways to escape detection. The assassins will travel fast by main roads. Say a week?”

      “A week from whenever the letter from the University arrived,” said Claudia. “Elda, when did your father get his?”

      “He didn’t say. But,” said Elda, “if it went by one of his clever pigeons, it would take a day to Derkholm and three days to the Emirates.”

      “Say the letter was sent the first day of term,” Olga calculated. “Ten days then, three for the pigeon and seven for the assassins. The day after tomorrow is the most likely. But we’ve enough spells here to set them for several nights, starting tomorrow and going on for the next three nights. Agreed?”

      “Most for the day after tomorrow, I think,” said Claudia. “Yes.”

      Ruskin sprang up. “Let’s get to work then.”

      This was something Felim could do too. They took six books apiece and worked through them, each in his or her own way. Felim worked slowly, pausing to give a wide and possibly murderous grin from time to time, and the spells he set up made a lot of use of the knife and fork from Elda’s food hamper. Ruskin went methodically, with strips of orange peel and a good deal of muttering. Once or twice, he dragged The Red Book of Costamaret over and appeared to make use of something it said. Elda and Olga both spent time before they started, choosing the right spells, murmuring things like, “No, I hate slime!” and “Now, that’s clever!” and worked very quickly once they had decided what to do – very different things, to judge from Olga’s heaps of crumbled yellow chalk and Elda’s brisk patterns of orange peel. Lukin worked quickest of all, flipping through book after book, building patterns of crumbs or orange pips, or knotting frayed cloth from Elda’s curtains, or simply whispering words. Claudia was slowest. She seemed to choose what to do by shutting her eyes and then opening a book, after which she would think long and fiercely over the pages, and it would be many minutes before she slowly plucked out one of her own hairs or carefully scraped fluff off the carpet. Once she went outside for a blade of grass, which she burnt with Ruskin’s lighter, before going to the door again and blowing the ash away.

      All of them met spells that they could tell were not working. There would be a sort of dragging heaviness, as if the whole universe were resisting what they were trying to do. Nobody let that bother them. If they did enough spells, they were sure some would work. They just went on to a new one. Between them, they set up at least sixty spells. When the refectory bell rang for supper, Elda’s concert hall was littered with peculiar patterns, mingled with books, and all six of them were exhausted.

      “You’re going to have to walk carefully in here,” Lukin said to Elda.

      “It’s only for a few days. I’ll put a note for the cleaners,” Elda said blithely. “If Felim’s safe, it’s worth it.”

      “Thank you,” said Felim. “I am most truly grateful.”

       CHAPTER FOUR

      Ruskin spent most of the night reading The Red Book of Costamaret, first in the buttery bar with a mug of beer then, when they turned him out, in his own room. He fell asleep when he had finished it, but he was up at dawn, pounding on the door of Elda’s concert hall for the rest of the books.

      “Oh good gods!” squawked Elda, when the pounding was reinforced by Ruskin’s voice at its loudest. “All right. I’m coming!” She flopped off her bed-platform, remembered just in time that the floor was covered with spells, and spread her wings, thinking it was lucky she was a griffin. She flew to the door, too sleepy to notice that the wind from her wings was fanning some of the spells out of shape. Meanwhile, the door was leaping about. “Ruskin,” said Elda, wrenching it open, “please remember I can tear you apart if I want to – and I almost want to.”

      “I want Cyclina on Tropism,” Ruskin said. “I need it. It’s like a craving. And I’ll take the rest of my books too while I’m here.”

      “Feel free,” Elda said irritably, moving away from the doorway.

      Ruskin rushed inside, skipping dextrously between spells, and pounced on Cyclina. “Do you want to read The Red Book of Costamaret?” he asked as he collected the rest. “It’s full of the most valuable magical hints. You can have it now if you like, but I want to read it again before I have to take it back to the Library.”

      Elda had not formed any great opinion of The Red Book – although it had indeed given her a