Mixed Magics: Four Tales of Chrestomanci by Diana Wynne Jones Read Free Book Online

door—which closed with a slam behind them—into a dark, wooden hallway. Beyond this was a big room that was much lighter because of a row of filthy windows looking out onto bushes. As the monkey-man hurried them on through it, Cat recognized the place as a magician’s workshop. It breathed out the smell of magic and of dragon’s blood, and there were symbols chalked over most of the floor. Cat had a tantalizing feeling that he should have known what most of those symbols were supposed to do, and that they were not quite in any order he was used to, but when he thought about this, the symbols meant nothing to him.
    The main thing he noticed was the row of star charts along one wall. There were eight of them, getting newer and newer from the old, brown one at the far left, to the one on the right, after a gap where a ninth chart had been torn down, which was white and freshly drawn.
    “Gave up on that one. Too well protected,” the monkey-man remarked as Cat looked at the gap. Again he was probably talking to himself, for he swung around at once and opened a door at the end of the room. “Come along, come along,” he snapped, and hurried on a down a sideways flight of stone steps into the cold stone basement under the house. Cat, as he hurried after, only had time to think that the last chart, after the torn-down one, had looked uncomfortably familiar in some way, before the monkey-man swung around on both of them at the bottom of the steps. “Now then,” he said, “what are your names?”
    It seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to ask, but they stood shivering on the chilly flagstones, staring from him to one another. Neither of them had the least idea.
    The man sighed at their stupidity. “Too much of the forgettery,” he muttered in that way that seemed to be talking to himself. He pointed to Cat. “All right,” he said to Tonino. “What’s his name?”
    “Er—” said Tonino, “it means something. In Latin, I think. Felix, or something like that. Yes, Felix.”
    “And,” the man said to Cat, “ his name is?”
    “Tony,” said Cat. This did not strike him as quite right, any more than Felix did, but he did not seem to be able to get any closer than that. “His name’s Tony.”
    “Not Eric?” snapped the man. “Which of you is Eric?”
    They both shook their heads, although Cat had a faint, fleeting idea that the name meant a protected kind of heather. That was such an idiotic idea that he gave it up at once.
    “Very well,” snapped the man. “Tony and Felix, you are now my apprentices. This room here is where you will eat and sleep. You will find mattresses over there.” He pointed a brown, hairy hand at a dim corner. “In that other corner there are brooms and dustpan. I require you to sweep this room and make it as clean and tidy as you can. When that is done, you may lay out the mattresses.”
    “Please, sir—” Tonino began. He stopped, looking frightened, as the withered old monkey face swung around to stare at him. Then he said something that was obviously not what he had started to say. “Please, sir, what should we call you?”
    “I am known as Master Spiderman,” snapped the man. “You will address me as Master.”
    Cat felt a small, chilly jolt of alarm at the name. He put it down to the fact that he was already disliking this monkey-faced old man very much indeed. There was a smell that came off him, of old clothes, mustiness, and illness, which reminded Cat of—of—of something he could not quite remember, except that it made him frightened and uneasy. So, to make himself feel better, he said what he knew Tonino had really been going to say.
    “Sir, we haven’t had any lunch yet.”
    Master Spiderman’s round monkey eyes blinked Cat’s way. “Is that so? Well, you may have food as soon as you have swept and tidied this room.” At that, he turned and ran up the stone steps to the door, with his musty black coat swirling. He stopped at the top. “Do not try to do