being designed for. Sir Alec was a master at keeping secrets, after all. But either way-whether Monk was in on the game or not-there was no denying the deep satisfaction of defeating the best thaumaturgy a team of First Grade wizards could throw at him. Because rightly or wrongly, it was going to take a lot longer than six months to forget what being a despised Third Grade wizard had felt like.
By now the early morning’s blanket of mist had almost completely burned away, so the sun was free to gild the hedgerows and grass verges that bordered the country lane. Wild snapdragons and shy blue-bells danced among the untidy greenery. Tiny scarlet-faced finches hopped and strutted on spindly legs. Momentarily distracted, Gerald smiled. After so long in grimly tarmacked and cobblestoned Nettleworth, where the only grass to be found was in a painting, Finkley Meadows was a literal breath of fresh air. But there was no time to appreciate its postcard prettiness right now. Right now he had more tests to pass.
Abruptly sober, remembering with a nasty twinge why he’d just unravelled that hex, Gerald took a deep breath, cautiously stepped through the gates, and only jumped an inch or two when they slammed shut behind him. On another deep breath, his heart again banging at his ribs, he started walking towards the Department house’s distant front door. More oak trees lined each side of the gravel driveway, their spreading branches and boisterous foliage blotting out the clear blue sky. Beyond their ragged sentinel stand, an unkempt garden swallowed open ground. Lacy shreds of mist tangled amongst the snarled undergrowth, and an ominous chill seeped upwards through the untamed grass, smelling old, and rank, and angry.
He shivered. So much for picturesque.
Despite the general theme of “Don’t tell the new chum anything about the establishment,” a couple of the younger, more recently recruited agents he’d met in passing at headquarters had let one or two small hints slip. Apparently every trainee agent ended up here at the house, where they faced a test designed specifically for them. If they passed, congratulations. Welcome to one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Have fun and don’t forget to sign your will.
“And if we fail?” he’d asked. “What happens then?”
No-one knew. Not for certain. But failed trainees were never seen again.
Remembering that, Gerald shoved his gloveless hands in his overcoat pockets, scrunched his shoulders round his ears and walked a little faster. Nothing but a hobgoblin story, surely. The government couldn’t go around disappearing people. That would be illegal. No, the agents had been playing tricks on him. Probably the senior agents had put the juniors up to it. Old dogs geeing up the new pup. Having some fun at his expense.
“That’s all it is, Reg,” he said in passing to the wood pigeon staring at him from a nearby low branch. “Them taking the mickey. I’ve got nothing to worry about. I’ll be fine.”
The pigeon, who actually didn’t look much like Reg at all, really the only thing they had in common were the feathers, cocked its head to one side and cooed down at him, dimly.
He sighed. “Right. Yes. Thanks so much for that. Very helpful. Most inspiring.”
Lord, he missed Reg.
It occurred to him then, steadily walking, that the house at the end of the driveway wasn’t getting any closer. In fact, it seemed to be further away now than when he’d started.
He stopped. Looked behind him. The closed gates seemed the right distance away, given how long he’d been walking. How strange. He looked back to the house — and nearly fell over, because he was on the other side of the gates again, in the muddy laneway, looking through the wrought-iron bars at misty, haphazard chimney pots and higgledy-piggledy gables.
His jaw dropped. “Bloody hell!”
This time the hex wasn’t the same one he’d so painstakingly unravelled a few minutes ago-but it was just as tricky and demanding. He nearly went cross-eyed dismantling it, but at long last the gates swung open. Practically bolting through, he paid no attention as they slammed shut behind him. Put his head down, sprinted for the house — and nearly broke his nose on the closed wrought-iron gates.
“ What?” he shouted, and jumped up and down a bit. “This is ridiculous! How am I supposed to pass the damned test if I can’t even set foot in the house?”
Except, apparently, this was the test. Or at least the start of it. Obviously the driveway was hexed, just like the front gates. But why hadn’t he sensed it? Worse yet, what else hadn’t he sensed? What other nasty surprises were waiting for him? He didn’t have a bloody clue. Wonderful. His morning was lurching from bad to worse. All right. Think, Dunwoody. Was he supposed to defuse both hexes? No, no, that was too easy. Too obvious. There had to be a different explanation. This was a test devised by Sir Alec, after all. He had to think sideways. He had to think devious.
What is it I’ve been training to be? An agent. And what is it agents do? They slide into tricky situations unobtrusively. Hmmm. Nothing terribly unobtrusive about marching through the front gates and up the driveway straight to the front door, is there? So think, you plonker. How else can you get to where you need to go?
Of course he could just blast the establishment’s encompassing high stone wall to rubble. Lord knew he had an arsenal of destructive incants at his fingertips these days. Except much of his janitorial training had been about finesse and subtlety.
So. No blasting, either.
Maybe there were some handy little cracks and crevices under the moss and ivy? Finger-and-toe holds that could help him climb up and over?
But when he tried digging handfuls of green stuff off the stonework the most appalling wave of nausea flooded through him, courtesy of a powerful antiintruder incant. Head reeling, stomach rebelling, he flailed backwards and nearly landed on his rump in the muddy road. Balance recovered, breathing hard, he waited for the awful sickness to subside.
This is embarrassing. I’m a rogue wizard! I turned a cat into a lion. Hell’s bells, I made a dragon… but I can’t get myself over a wall?
Apparently not.
So there was no going through the front gates and no climbing over the wall. That meant there had to be another way in. Disgruntled, he switched his shield-incant back on, because he was in public and that was the arrangement, and started tromping.
The moss-and-ivy covered stonework faithfully followed the edges of the country lane, in places so closely he had to leap down from the narrow verge. There was no sign of another gate or any breach in the wall. At this rate he was never going to find his way in. And would that mean some kind of a Department record? Gerald Dunwoody, rogue agent, the first wizard in history to fail janitorial testing by not even making it through the front door?
Bloody hell. I hope not.
Rounding a sharp bend in the lane, without warning he was confronted by an enormous hay wagon heading straight for him. There wasn’t time to get across the lane to the hedgerow on the other side, and the only way he wasn’t going to get squashed by the dangerously overhanging hay was if he flattened himself against the wall.
Oh no. I am going to be so sick…
With a despairing groan he closed his eyes and turned his face away. Pushed his shoulder-blades, spine and hamstrings flat to the spongy moss and surrendered to the messy inevitable.
Which didn’t happen.
The hay wagon trundled by, its driver oblivious to his discomfort, clearly contemptuous of madcap townie pedestrians who ought to know better than go prancing about the countryside on foot. The wagon’s massively hairy carthorse snorted, matching its driver’s opinion, soup-plate hooves splashing liquid mud and stones.
Remarkably unflattened and miraculously not sick, Gerald gaped at the wall. Then, just to be certain, he leaned his full weight against it. No. Not so much as a quease.
This is absurd. What’s going on? What’s changed?
Only one thing.
He deactivated the shield-incant and warily touched his fingertips to a bare patch of stonework. A wave of nausea immediately crashed over him. Retching, he slammed the shield in place again and the sickness vanished.
Right. Right. There’s a point to this, I know there is. Somewhere here there’s a message. I think. What a pity I don’t speak fluent Sir Alec…
