the door open, thick smoke rolled in, filled with harsh crackling. It was clear that the inn was on fire already. Chrestomanci clapped the door shut again. The smoke set both of them coughing, Chrestomanci so violently that Thasper was afraid he would choke. He pulled both of them back into the middle by the room. By now, smoke was twining up between the bare boards of the floor, causing Chrestomanci to cough again.
“This would happen just as I had gone to bed with flu!” he said, when he could speak. “Such is life. These orderly gods of yours leave us no choice.” He crossed the smoking floor and pushed open the door by the fireplace.
It opened on to blank space. Thasper gave a yelp of horror.
“Precisely,” coughed Chrestomanci. “You were intended to crash to your death.”
“Can’t we jump to the ground?” Thasper suggested. Chrestomanci shook his smooth head. “Not after they’ve done this to it. No. We’ll have to carry the fight to them and go and visit the gods instead. Will you be kind enough to lend me your turban before we go?” Thasper stared at this odd request. “I would like to use it as a belt,” Chrestomanci croaked. “The way to Heaven may be a little cold, and I only have pajamas under my dressing gown.”
The striped undergarments Chrestomanci was wearing did look a little thin. Thasper slowly unwound his turban. To go before gods bareheaded was probably no worse than going in nightclothes, he supposed. Besides, he did not believe there were any gods. He handed the turban over. Chrestomanci tied the length of pale blue cloth around his black and yellow gown and seemed to feel more comfortable. “Now hang on to me,” he said, “and you’ll be all right.” He took Thasper’s arm again and walked up into the sky, dragging Thasper with him.
For a while, Thasper was too stunned to speak. He could only marvel at the way they were treading up the sky as if there were invisible stairs in it. Chrestomanci was doing it in the most matter of fact way, coughing from time to time, and shivering a little, but keeping very tight hold of Thasper nevertheless. In no time, the town was a clutter of prettily lit dolls’ houses below, with two red blots where two of them were burning. The stars were unwinding about them, above and below, as they had already climbed above some of them.
“It’s a long climb to Heaven,” Chrestomanci observed. “Is there anything you’d like to know on the way?”
“Yes,” said Thasper. “Did you say the gods were trying to kill me?”
“They are trying to eliminate the Sage of Dissolution,” said Chrestomanci, “which they may not realize is the same thing. You see, you are the Sage.”
“But I’m not!” Thasper insisted. “The Sage is a lot older than me, and he asks questions I never even thought of until I heard of him.”
“Ah yes,” said Chrestomanci. “I’m afraid there is an awful circularity to this. It’s the fault of whoever tried to put you away as a small child. As far as I can work out, you stayed three years old for seven years—until you were making such a disturbance in our world that we had to find you and let you out. But in this world of Theare, highly organized and fixed as it is, the prophecy stated that you would begin preaching Dissolution at the age of twenty-three, or at least in this very year. Therefore the preaching had to begin this year. You did not need to appear. Did you ever speak to anyone who had actually heard the Sage preach?”
“No,” said Thasper. “Come to think of it.”
“Nobody did,” said Chrestomanci. “You started in a small way anyway. First you wrote a book, which no one paid much heed to—”
“No, that’s wrong,” objected Thasper. “He-I-er, the Sage was writing a book after the preaching.”
“But don’t you see,” said Chrestomanci, “because you were back in Theare by then, the facts had to try to catch you up. They did this by running backwards until it was possible for you to arrive where you were supposed to be. Which was in that room in the inn there at the start of your career. I suppose you are just old enough to start by now. And I suspect our celestial friends up here tumbled to this belatedly and tried to finish you off. It wouldn’t have done them any good, as I shall