I knew most of the people sitting in the armchairs at least by sight. The one pouring himself a glass of rich red wine was Mr Seuly, the Mayor of Stallchester, who owned the ironworks at the other end of town. He passed the decanter along to Mr Johnson, who owned the ski runs and the hotels. Mr Priddy, beside him, ran the casino. One of those smoking a cigar was Mr Hawkins the tailor and the other was Mr Fellish who owned The Stallchester News. Mr Goodwin, beyond those, owned a big chain of shops in Stallchester. I wasn’t quite sure what the others were called, but I knew the tall one owned all the land round here, and that the fat one ran the trams and buses. And there was Mr Loder the butcher, helping Uncle Alfred uncork bottles and carefully pour wine into decanters. The thick nutty smell of port cut across the smell of cigars.
All these men had shrewd respectable faces and expensive clothes, which made it worse that they were all staring at me with concern. Mayor Seuly sipped at his wine and shook his head a little. “Not long for this life unless something’s done soon,” he said. “What’s causing it? Does anyone know?”
“Something – no, someone he should have put down in his last life, by the looks of it,” Mr Hawkins the tailor said.
The tall land-owning one nodded. “And the chance to cure it now, only he’s not done it,” he said, deep and gloomy. “Why hasn’t he?”
Uncle Alfred beckoned me to stop standing staring and put the bottles on the table. “Because,” he said, “to be brutally frank with you, I’ve only just found out who he should be dealing with. It’s someone up at Stallery.”
There was a general groan at this.
“Then send him there,” said Mr Fellish.
“I am. He’s going next week,” my uncle said. “It couldn’t be contrived any sooner.”
“Good. Better late than never,” Mayor Seuly said.
“You know,” observed Mr Priddy, “it doesn’t surprise me at all that it’s someone up at Stallery. That’s such a strong Fate on the boy. It looks equal to the power up there – and that’s so strong that it interferes with communications and stops this town thriving as it should.”
“It’s not just this town Stallery interferes with,” Mayor Seuly said. “Their financial grip is down over the whole world, like a net. I come up against it almost every day. They have magical stoppages occurring all the time, so that they can make money and I can’t. If I try to get round what they do – bang. I lose half my profits.”
“Oh, we’ve all had that,” agreed Mr Goodwin. “Odd to think it’s in this lad’s hands to save us as well as himself.”
I stood by the table, turning from one to the other as they spoke. My mouth went drier with each thing that was said. By this time I was so horrified I could hardly swallow. I tried to ask a question, but I couldn’t.
My uncle seemed to realise what I wanted to know. He turned round. He was holding his glass up to the light, so that a red blob of light from it wavered on his forehead as he said, “This is all very true and tragic, but how is my nephew to know who this person is when he sees him? That’s what you wanted to ask, wasn’t it, Con?” It was, but I couldn’t even nod by then.
“Simple,” said Mayor Seuly. “There’ll come a moment when he’ll know. There’s always a moment of recognition in cases of karma. The person he needs will say something or do something, and it will be like clicking a switch. Light will come on in the boy’s head and he’ll know.”
The rest of them nodded and made growling murmurs that they agreed, it was like that, and Uncle Alfred said, “Got that, Con?”
I managed to nod this time. Then Mayor Seuly said, “But he’ll want to know how to deal with the person when he does know. That’s quite as important. How about he uses Granek’s Equation?”
“Too complicated,” said Mr Goodwin. “Try him with Beaulieu’s Spell.”
“I’d prefer a straight Whitewick,” Mr Loder the butcher said.
After that they all began suggesting things, all of which meant nothing to me, and each of them got quite heated in favour of his own suggestion. Before long, the tall, land-owning one was banging his wineglass on the little table beside his chair and shouting, “You’ve got to have him eliminate this person for good, quickly and simply! The only answer is a Persholt!”
“Please remember,” my uncle said anxiously, “that Con’s only a boy and he doesn’t know any magic at all.”
This caused a silence. “Ah,” Mayor Seuly said at length. “Yes. Of course. Well then, I think the best plan is to enable him to summon a Walker.”
At this, all the others broke into rumbles of “Exactly! Of course! A Walker. Why didn’t we think of that before?”
Mayor Seuly looked round the circle of them and said, “Agreed? Good. Now what can we give him to use? It ought to be something quite plain and ordinary that no one will suspect…Ah. Yes. A cork from one of those bottles will do nicely.”
He held out his hand with a handsome gold ring shining on it and Mr Loder passed him the purple stained cork from the bottle he had just emptied into a decanter. Mr Seuly took it and clasped it in both hands for a moment. Then he nodded and passed it on to Mr Johnson, who did the same. The cork slowly travelled round the entire circle, including Uncle Alfred and Mr Loder standing by the table, who passed it back to the Mayor.
Mayor Seuly held the cork up in his finger and thumb and beckoned me over to him. I still couldn’t speak. I stood there, looking down on his wealthily clipped hair, that almost hid the thin place on top, and wondering at how rounded and rich he looked. I breathed in smells of nutty, fruity wine, smooth good cloth and a tang of aftershave, and nodded at everything he said.
“All you have to do,” he said, “is first to have your moment of recognition and then to fetch out this cork. You hold it up like I’m doing, and you say, ‘I summon a Walker to bring me what I need’ Have you got that?” I nodded. It sounded quite easy to remember. “You may have to wait a while for the Walker,” Mayor Seuly went on, “and you mustn’t be frightened when you see the Walker coming. It may turn out bigger than you expect. When it reaches you, the Walker will give you something. I don’t know what. Walkers are designed to give you exactly the tool for the job. But take my word for it, the object you get will do just what you need it to do. And you must give the Walker this cork in exchange. Walkers never give something for nothing. Have you got all that?” he asked. I nodded again. “Then take this cork and keep it with you all the time,” he said, “but don’t let anyone else see it. And I hope that when we next meet you’ll carry no karma at all.”
As I took the cork – which felt like an ordinary cork to me – Mr Johnson said, “Right. That’s done. Send him off, Alfred, and let’s start the meeting.”
I didn’t really need Uncle Alfred to jerk his head at me to go. I got out as quickly as I could and rushed upstairs to the kitchen for a drink of water. But by the time I got there, my mouth was hardly dry at all. That was odd, but it was such a relief that I hardly wondered about it. I wasn’t even very scared any more, and that was odd too, but I didn’t think of it at the time.
I got much more nervous as the week marched on. The worst part