Magicians of Caprona - Diana Wynne Jones [80]
The Duchess whirled around and pointed her long finger at him. “You! I misled you!”
“Oh you did,” Chrestomanci said. If the Duchess had hoped to catch him off balance, she was too late. Chrestomanci was steady now. “You led me a proper wild-goose chase,” he said, and put out one hand, palm forward, towards her pointing finger. The long finger bent and began dripping white, as if it were wax indeed. The Duchess stared at it, and then looked up at Chrestomanci almost imploringly. “No,” Chrestomanci said, sounding very tired. “I think you’ve done enough harm. Take your true form, please.” He beckoned at her, like someone sick of waiting.
Instantly, the Duchess’s body was seething out of shape. Her arms gathered inwards. Her face lengthened, and yet still remained the same waxy, sardonic face. Whiskers sprang from her upper lip, and her eyes lit red, like bulging lamps. Her marble skirts turned white, billowed and gathered soapily to her ankles, revealing her feet as long pink claws. And all the time, she was shrinking. Two teeth appeared at the end of her lengthened white face. A naked pink tail, marked in rings like an earthworm, snaked from behind the soapy bundle of her skirts and lashed the marble floor angrily. She shrank again.
Finally, a huge white rat with eyes like red marbles, leaped to the marble railing and crouched, chittering and glaring with its humped back twitching.
“The White Devil,” said Chrestomanci, “which the Angel was sent to expel from Caprona. Right, Benvenuto and Vittoria. She’s all yours. Make sure she never comes back.”
Benvenuto and Vittoria were already creeping forward. Their tails swept about and their eyes stared. They sprang. The rat sprang too, off the parapet with a squeal, and went racing away down the dome. Benvenuto raced with it, long and low, keeping just beside the pink whip of its tail. Vittoria raced the other side, a snowy sliver making the great rat look yellow, running at the rat’s shoulder. They saw the rat turn and try to bite her. And then, suddenly, the three were joined by a dozen smaller rats, all running and squealing. They only saw them for an instant, before the whole group ran over the slope of the dome and disappeared.
“Her helpers from the Palace,” said Chrestomanci.
“Will Vittoria be safe?” said Angelica.
“She’s the best ratter in Caprona, isn’t she?” said Chrestomanci. “Apart from Benvenuto, that is. And by the time the Devil and her friends get to the ground, they’ll have every cat in Caprona after them. Now—”
Tonino found he was the right size again. He clung to Rosa’s hand. Beyond Rosa, he could see Angelica, also the right size, shivering and pulling her flimsy blue dress down over her knees, before she grabbed for Marco’s hand. The wind was far worse on a larger body. But what made Tonino grab at Rosa was not that. The dome was not world-sized any more. It was a white hummock wheeling in a gray-brown landscape. The hills around Caprona were pitilessly clear. He could see flashes of flame and running figures which seemed to be almost beside him, or just above him, as if the tiny white dome had reeled over on its side. Yet the houses of Caprona were immeasurably deep below, and the river seemed to stand up out of them. The New Bridge appeared almost overhead, suffused in clouds of smoke. Smoke rolled in the hills and swirled giddily out of the downside-upside houses beyond the Old Bridge, and, worst of all, the boom and clap, the rattle and yammer of guns was now nearly deafening. Tonino no longer wondered what had scared Renata and Paolo so. He felt as if he was spinning to his death.
He clung to Rosa’s hand and looked desperately up at the Angel. That at least was still huge. The scroll, which it still held patiently towards them, was almost as big as the side of a house.
“—Now,” said Chrestomanci, “the best thing you can do,