Deep Secret
A fantasy adventure about saving the universe one world at a time from Diana Wynne Jones. The companion novel to the bestselling The Merlin Conspiracy.Magids look after all worlds, steer them towards magic, and keep history happening. But Rupert Venables’ mentor has just died, and as the junior magid on earth he has to find a replacement while also trying to find the lost heir of a collapsing empire, worlds away. Rupert interweaves the fate lines to get all the candidates together at a sci-fi fantasy convention, and havoc ensues as they all converge on a very strange hotel, where everything is always linked, the walls keep moving, people are trying to kill him, and nothing is as it seems…a magical, epic story from the Godmother of fantasy.
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HarperCollins Children’s Books
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First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz in 1997
This edition first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2013
Text copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 1997
The author and illustrator assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007507542
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2013 ISBN: 9780007507559
Version: 2016-11-24
Contents
About the Publisher
In the year E.K. 3413, the following files were secretly obtained from the Magid Rupert Venables and, at the Emperor’s personal request, deposited in the new archive at Iforion.
I may as well start with some of our deep secrets because this account will not be easy to understand without them.
All over the multiverse, the sign for Infinity or Eternity is a figure eight laid on its side. This is no accident, since it exactly represents the twofold nature of the many worlds, spread as they are in the manner of a spiral nebula twisted like a Mobius strip to become endless. It is said that the number of these worlds is infinite and that more are added daily. But it is also said that the Emperor Koryfos the Great caused this multiplicity of worlds somehow by conquering from Ayewards to Naywards.
You may take your pick, depending on whether you are comfortable with worlds infinitely multiplying, or prefer to think the number stable. I have never decided.
Two facts, however, are certain: one half of this figure eight of worlds is negative magically, or Naywards, and the other half positive, or Ayewards; and the Empire of Koryfos, situated across the twist at the centre, has to this day the figure-eight sign of Infinity as its imperial insignia.
This sign appears everywhere in the Empire, even more frequently than statues of Koryfos the Great. I have reason to know this rather well. About a year ago, I was summoned to the Empire capital, Iforion, to attend a judicial enquiry. Some very old laws required that a Magid should be present – otherwise I am sure they would have done without me, and I could certainly have done without them. The Koryfonic Empire is one of my least favourite charges. It is traditionally in the care of the most junior Magid from Earth and I was at that time just that. I was tired too. I had only the day before returned from America, where I had, almost single-handed, managed to push the right people into sorting out some kind of peace in the former Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland. But all my pride and pleasure in this vanished when I saw the summons. Groaning to myself, I put on the required purple bands and cream silk brocade garments and went to take my seat in the closed court.
My first peevish, jet-lagged thought was, Why can’t they use one of the nice rooms? The Great Imperial Palace has parts that go back over a thousand years and some of those old courts and halls are wonderful. But this enquiry was in a new place, lined with rather smelly varnished wood, bleak and box-like and charmless. And the wooden benches were vilely uncomfortable. The figure-eight insignia – carved in relief and painted too bright a gold – dug into my shoulders and dazzled off the walls and off the big wooden chair provided for the Emperor. I remember irritably transferring my gaze to the inevitable statue of Koryfos the Great, looming in the corner. That was new too, and picked out in over-bright gilt, but there is this to be said for Koryfos: he had a personality. Though the statues are always the same and always idealised, you could never mistake them for anything but the likeness of a real person. He carried his head on one side, a bit like Alexander the Great of Earth, and wore a vague, cautious smile that said, “I hear what you say, but I’m going to do things my way anyway.” You could see he was as obstinate as sin.
