Conrad’s Fate

Conrad’s Fate
Diana Wynne Jones

Glorious new rejacket of a Diana Wynne Jones Chrestomanci novel – now a book with extra bits!Conrad is young, good at heart, and yet is apparently suffering from the effects of such bad karma that there is nothing in his future but terrible things. Unless he can alter his circumstances – well, quite frankly, he is DOOMED.Conrad is sent in disguise to Stallery Mansion, to infiltrate the magical fortress that has power over the whole town of Stallchester, and to discover the identity of the person who is affecting his Fate so badly. Then he has to kill that person. But can any plan really be that simple and straightforward? Of course it can't! And things start to go very strangely for Conrad from the moment he meets the boy called Christopher…This is trademark DWJ – packed with laugh-aloud humour, insane logic, spot-on observations, organised chaos, and all wrapped up in a rattling good adventure which oozes magic from every seam. Literally.

Diana Wynne Jones

CONRAD’S FATE

Illustrated by Tim Stevens

Dedication (#ulink_d78c2b78-130e-53b8-b301-199c6732a5af)

To Stella Paskins

Contents

Cover (#u940962fc-8d40-57ab-a919-bfea8d64533d)

Title Page (#ud29cf527-1b99-5e74-9d09-c29c8c6c7d74)

Dedication (#ua46baf45-6198-5593-bf36-36a765aac6f4)

Author’s Preface (#u76404be0-cbcd-548e-8f4c-ae25d3754462)

Chapter One (#u2907db1c-be53-55ed-8a04-ce9c81757d76)

Chapter Two (#ua6ef66d4-6461-5007-a504-80ceb46605da)

Chapter Three (#u19b85855-fb34-57c9-88a9-65804c8880bd)

Chapter Four (#u1622fff4-e1e1-592d-9cb1-774987d998e8)

Chapter Five (#u626a86eb-197a-52b9-a5ef-7984904f0c37)

Chapter Six (#uea4f5dbb-fee2-5068-9577-55c3a1e34017)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Other Works (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Author’s Preface (#ulink_73420d42-9c2f-5b57-ae69-9fd3c83345b6)

This book, and all the other books about Chrestomanci, takes place in a universe made up of many worlds. People living in these worlds have explored them and given them the name “Related Series” on the grounds that the same languages are spoken in each. There are twelve such Series, numbered One to Twelve, and there are usually nine different worlds in each Series, each of which will share the same geography as others of the same number. (For instance, Series Two is a mass of marshy land and rivers, Series Five is all islands, and Series Seven has the worlds where the British Isles have not split off from the continent of Europe).

Chrestomanci himself lives in Series Twelve A, which is like our own world except that magic is common there. Our own world is Twelve B and does not have magic to speak of. A magic user using the proper spells can easily cross from one world to another, which is what Christopher does in this book.

Conrad’s Fate takes place in Series Seven and, although there are in fact thousands of different worlds, none of the others need concern you here.

Diana Wynne Jones

Chapter One (#ulink_950af081-c601-5540-b32b-f520c4d8ca97)

When I was small, I always thought Stallery Mansion was some kind of fairy-tale castle. I could see it from my bedroom window, high in the mountains above Stallchester, flashing with glass and gold when the sun struck it. When I got to the place at last, it wasn’t exactly like a fairy tale.

Stallchester, where we had our shop, is quite high in the mountains too. There are a lot of mountains here in Series Seven and Stallchester is in the English Alps. Most people thought this was the reason why you could only receive television at one end of the town, but my uncle told me it was Stallery doing it.

“It’s the protections they put round the place to stop anyone investigating them,” he said. “The magic blanks out the signal.”

My Uncle Alfred was a magician in his spare time so he knew this sort of thing. Most of the time he made a living for us all by keeping the bookshop at the cathedral end of town. He was a skinny, worrity little man with a bald patch under his curls and he was my mother’s half-brother. It always seemed a great burden to him, having to look after me and my mother and my sister Anthea. He rushed about muttering, “And how do I find the money, Conrad, with the book trade so slow!”

The bookshop was in our name too – it said GRANT AND TESDINIC in faded gold letters over the bow windows and the dark green door – but Uncle Alfred explained that it belonged to him now. He and my father had started the shop together. Then, just after I was born and a little before he died, my father had needed a lot of money suddenly, Uncle Alfred told me, and he sold his half of the bookshop to Uncle Alfred. Then my father died and Uncle Alfred had to support us.

“And so he should do,” my mother said in her vague way. “We’re the only family he’s got.”

My sister Anthea said she wanted to know what my father had needed the money for, but she never could find out. Uncle Alfred said he didn’t know. “And you never get any sense out of Mother,” Anthea said to me. “She just says things like ‘Life is always a lottery’ and ‘Your father was usually hard up’ – so all I can think is that it must have been gambling debts. The casino’s only just up the road after all.”

I rather liked the idea of my father gambling half a bookshop away. I used to like taking risks myself. When I was eight I borrowed some skis and went down all the steepest and iciest ski runs, and in the summer I went rock climbing. I felt I was really following in my father’s footsteps. Unfortunately, someone saw me halfway up Stall Crag and told my uncle.

“Ah, no, Conrad,” he said, wagging a worried, wrinkled finger at me. “I can’t have you taking these risks.”