The tower caught Oscar completely by surprise - in the drizzle and the dark he hadn't been looking about him and he had no idea that anything that large could possibly be there until he was standing there with it looming over him, out of the orange streetlight, up into the cloudy night. It was a white, square tower, solid and stern, and it seemed so huge that Oscar couldn't quite believe that he had never seen it before, but no one else was particularly surprised by it - all Maggs said was:
"What are we doing here?"
"Oh," Ridley looked crestfallen, "You don't...?" She chewed at her lip for a moment and then obviously made a decision, "Well, let's see - follow me..." and she led them through the gates and into the building.
Despite its forbidding appearance and, Oscar had to admit, impressive entrance hall, the tower itself was actually disappointingly homely inside. It seemed, in fact, like nothing so much as a big and important school, with hardwearing linoleum floors and bland official paintwork.
Ridley ushered them all into an ancient looking lift and they creaked up several floors until she led them out into a deserted corridor and then through an unmarked door into what, to Oscar's eyes, looked unfortunately like a schoolroom.
One end of the room was taken up with a large table, crowded with complicated looking bits of apparatus, all strange glass containers suspended from various metal frames and retorts, some of which Oscar cheerfully recognised from Hammages, which he presumed meant they were magic, in some way.
Elsewhere there were a number of chairs, of all different kinds, with small tables spread between them; the walls were lined with bookcases and, in the few gaps where there weren't bookcases, prints and posters: a night sky with the constellations drawn in, some of them quite new to Oscar, maps of countries he didn't recognise, strange diagrams and charts and a couple that looked worryingly medical.
Ridley stood expectantly in the middle of the room and looked at them:
"Well?"
"Um..." Maggs was evidently as little impressed as Oscar, "It's very nice, I'm sure..."
"You don't remember it?" Ridley's smile slipped.
"Should I, dear?"
"Well, I'm afraid so, yes..." Ridley shrugged and turned to sit on the edge of the large table, "I was rather hoping I might jog some memory or something, but... it's your study, Maggs - where you taught your apprentices - don't you remember it at all?"
"Mine? This is my room?" Maggs stumbled backwards into one of the chairs and gazed around her in amazement, "I... I... no... I'm sorry, Ridley, I don't, I don't recognise it at all..."
"No, I'm sorry, Maggs, I shouldn't have just sprung it on you like that..."
"Hang on a minute," Oscar was confused, "I don't understand - how can you not remember your own room, Maggs?"
Maggs looked up at him and then at Ridley, who gave her a sad smile. She turned back to Oscar.
"Oscar, I have a confetti... confession to make... I'm not a Magi. I was once; I was, everyone tells me, a great one, a powerful one, but then... the Darklings came...."
"Darklings? You said that before - those things in Hammages, that attacked us..."
"Dark spirits," said Ridley, grimly, "Spirits beyond the control of the Magi - there are many of those, of course, but these ones are different - they are rebels, determined to attack the Magi, to defeat them... 'The Wild Ride' they call themselves, they first appeared about twenty years ago - before my time, really..."
"I... I don't remember it myself...." Maggs shook her head, "To me now the time before the Wild Ride is like a story someone told me once. All I remember is waking up knowing that I knew something once but that I now couldn't remember what it was - there was a hole in my mind: they had taken my magic away from me. I still have trouble, with words, with some things, memories - they are slippersly, you see?
"Anyway I wasn't the only one. The Wild Ride were everywhere and we were all afraid. And their magic is dark and, what's the word? Wrong... different... the Knights Watchmen can't track them any better than anyone else could: they can't find them, they can't stop them. So they decided to do the next best thing: to hide us instead. They covered places like Hammages and the Temple with glamours and wards, they sealed up our houses and colleges, they watched our every movement and moment, keeping us secret and safe. We call it The Veil and it keeps us hidden from the world."
"Well, it did," said Ridley, "Now the Wild Ride are back, walking through the Veil like its not there and no one is safe."
"And the Knights Watchmen are worse than ever," continued Maggs, "You saw that for yourself - before they might have been strict and over-protectortive, now they persecute us and punish us for our own vulna... vulneral... weakness, they're no longer interested in keeping us safe - they want to keep us subbujuggered, too. Now we don't just hide from the Darklings, we hide from the Watchmen, too..."
"Which is why we need places like this," said Ridley, "It was a really lucky find - the private rooms of Magi are always secured and hidden by magic, you see, Oscar, but after what happened to Maggs, this room was left open to anyone to enter, but still secret, if you follow me - the perfect refuge from the Watchmen, really."
"Do you really not recognise any of it, Maggs?" asked Oscar.
"No, dear me, no - I'm not sure I even recognisise the person who used it, if you see what I mean..."
"That's something else," Oscar was still trying to puzzle it all out, "If you're not that same person any more, how come the Darklings are still trying to get you? Why you?"
"They're spirits," interjected Ridley, "We can't expect them to behave like rational humans."
Maggs shook her head, "And part of the problem is that I don't really know why they attacked me in the first place - I can't remember, after all..."
"But if this is your room, maybe there's something in it, something that can give us a clue..." Oscar ran to the table at the top of the room, pulling out a drawer underneath it. All that was inside was some blotting paper and a small metal box that rattled as the drawer opened.
"I'm afraid I'd already tried that - there's nothing," said an unexpected voice.
