by ‘Farringale destroyed by its own king,’ said Jay, and whistled. ‘That would be reason enough to expel him from Mandridore, certainly.’
‘And to cover the whole thing up afterwards,’ I agreed. ‘I’m sure Hrruna wouldn’t have wanted her husband to be remembered that way.’
‘So they went off into the Vales of Wonder looking for a new source,’ said Rob. ‘And the excess of magick attracted the ortherex, who feed off some derivative of it; and they’re still here. It fits, Ves, but do you have any evidence for it?’
‘We’re working on that.’
Indira was shaking her head, though she did not speak.
‘What’s on your mind?’ I prompted.
‘Surely…’ she said. ‘Surely no king would ever make such destructive decisions. And Torvaston is spoken of as a wise leader.’
‘I don’t imagine he made any such decision consciously, or rationally. But who decides to become an alcoholic? It is the kind of thing that happens by slow degrees, usually driven by some other factor. Perhaps Torvaston was feeling the pressures of leadership. Farringale was, after all, the most powerful and famous of the Fae Courts at the time. He might find himself turning more and more to something that eased the pressure, made him feel better. Some of his courtiers might follow suit.’ I knew my ideas bordered upon treasonous, or they might be if I was a subject of Their Majesties myself. It’s why I had opted not to mention any of my thoughts to Alban. Nor would I, until I had sound evidence to support them. ‘Or it may have been unintentional. If I could turn myself into a pancake and Indira could fly, what else could you do with that much magick? What if they were trying to achieve something truly stupendous, and it got out of hand?’
‘But how?’ said Jay. ‘How does a magick-drunk king flood an entire city?’
‘Right. Top question. We need to find the source of magick for Farringale Dell and get a good look at it. I’m thinking it might be possible to draw on it, in some way, or to goose it — I don’t know. Magick is too weak in modern Britain to pose any such problems. I doubt anyone’s been magick-drunk in decades, if not centuries.’
‘If they have,’ said Jay, ‘it’s been as adroitly covered up as Torvaston’s fall.’
A sobering thought. The Hidden Ministry was, after all, dedicated to keeping magickal secrets — besides being rather a secret itself. Had something like this happened more recently? I should call Mabyn, at the Forbidden Magick department. If it had, maybe she would know.
But, priorities. ‘Mauf,’ I said. ‘Lady Tregawny’s memoirs. This is why I brought them. Does she speak of anything that sounds like it might be the magickal heart of Farringale Dell?’
‘Not as such,’ said Mauf, but he spoke hesitantly. ‘She was writing a little before Torvaston’s day, of course, but she writes of a festival at midsummer. It was held only once every five or so years. We processed out of the City and into the Dell, my fellowes and I, garbed in festive raiment and all of a tumult, with our Gaiety and our Song. Their Majesties went ahead of us, as is Their Wont, and equally Their Right; and we of the Lesser Court did not reach the summit for some hours. When at last our moment came, so spongy was I that forward I went, hugger-mugger, and swounded quite away. ‘Gramercy,’ said I when once more I was myself, for despite my unseemly weakness they had allotted me a fair draught…’
‘Spongy?’ I said, befuddled.
‘Drunk,’ Mauf supplied.
‘Perhaps she meant inebriated in the ordinary sense,’ said Jay. ‘But if she did, what is the “fair draught”? It hardly makes sense for it to be some kind of beverage, or why did they go out into the Dell for it?’
‘And the summit?’ put in Rob. ‘Of what, and why were they going there?’
‘She does not say, in any greater detail than I have already shared,’ said Mauf.
‘Why would she?’ I said. ‘She was describing a familiar ritual. One headed up by Their Majesties and their Court…’ Something about the word summit nagged at me.
‘There is a mountain,’ offered Indira in her quiet way. ‘I saw it.’ Rather than add any more words to her sentence, she pointed upwards. She’d seen it when she was flying.
And that reminded me. ‘There is a mountain somewhere out there,’ I said excitedly. ‘Alban mentioned it when we first came here. He said that, according to legend, it was so tall that its peak touched the clouds. It’s where the griffins are supposed to have nested. Maybe that’s the source! The festival! You said five years or so, Mauf. It wasn’t every five years precisely?’
‘Lady Tregawny implies that the dates were variable,’ said Mauf. ‘In the year she speaks of, the festival came upon them apparently by surprise.’
‘So it was early!’ I was growing excited, for everything was falling into place in my mind. ‘Don’t you see? These magickal surges had been happening for a while, but only rarely — approximately once every five years. But even by Lady Tregawny’s time, some years before Torvaston, they were becoming more frequent. When they were rare, they could be celebrated and enjoyed. But when they became more common, they’d soon become disruptive and alarming. If the Court was in the habit of drawing heavily upon these surges when they came, like binge drinkers on a Saturday night, couldn’t that easily get out of control? Couldn’t some people end up taking far too much?’
‘If that’s the case,’ said Rob, ‘maybe it was not Torvaston who flooded Farringale.’
‘He and his courtiers might have hurried the process along,’ I argued. ‘Something changed a welcomed and celebrated event into a catastrophe. We need to find that mountain.’
Rob raised a hand. ‘Slow down, Ves. Think. If the mountain was as tall as all that, how were so many people reaching the summit?’
‘I’ve just spent three and a half minutes as a pancake.’
‘I take your point. Indira, where is this mountain?’
This simple question puzzled clever Indira more than it ought. She took her time in answering. ‘A long way off,’ she said. ‘And at the same time, very close. I cannot say… I think my perceptions were disordered.’
‘We were all a little disordered,’ said Rob kindly.
‘Then again, maybe not,’ I said. ‘Indira just pulled a great fairy routine, and Ms. Goodfellow was both airborne and upside down.’
Rob, Indira and Jay looked at me blankly. ‘What point are you making?’ said Jay.
‘Nothing else made sense for that period of time. Why should a mere immoveable landmark prove unaffected? Perhaps it was both near and far away. I suspect that reaching it might not be so simple as walking to it.’
‘So, then,’ said Jay, folding his arms. ‘We find the unfindable mountain, climb its unclimbably tall peak, and see if we can get ourselves magick-drunk enough to fall off again?’
‘Well.’ I blinked. ‘Except for maybe that last part, yes.’
‘Is anything ever going to be simple around you?’
‘Around me, no. But if you ask Milady nicely, she might assign you a quieter duty. You’d excel at rare books. That’s usually about trawling the non-magicker libraries for misplaced spell tomes and the like. Rarely gets exciting. Or you could maybe—’
‘Not serious, Ves.’
‘Oh.’
Rob, damn him, was hiding a grin with very little success. Even Indira looked amused, somewhere behind her mask of composure.
‘Let’s get a move on,’ I said hastily. ‘Mauf, we need a clue. Does Lady Tregawny give any hints as to where the procession started off from, or what route they took?’
‘I am afraid not, Miss Vesper.’
‘There might be something else, somewhere in here,’ said Indira, turning in a circle to take in the full extent of the enormous library.
‘Maybe,’ I agreed. ‘The first problem is finding it. The second… well, I don’t know that we’d find an A-to-Z Manual of Magickal Surge Festivities or anything like that. Nobody writes dreary tomes about birthday parties or stag dos for the same reason. We all know our own traditions too well to need instruction on the basics. We learn it growing up.’
‘Mr. Maufry,’ said Indira. ‘There is nothing about the mountain, I suppose?’
‘If I had a week to search…’ said Mauf.
We could have stayed for a week, if we had needed to. That possibility was why I had brought things like the porridge-pot along. But who wanted to spend a whole week sitting around in the biggest, best and most beautiful library on the planet, reading book after book after book after… all right, I did. I do. But not right then, and not if I had to do it on a steady diet of porridge. Those joys could wait until after we’d restored Farringale to habitability.
Ha, ha. Said I confidently, as though there weren’t about a thousand obstacles to get past in the process.
Ves. Focus!
For some reason, I’m starting to hear those words in Jay’s voice. I do not know what this means.
‘For once,’ I said, breaking in upon a debate between Indira and her brother as to the likelihood of a useful book’s being unearthed inside of a week. ‘I mean, I never thought I would say this, but: I don’t think books are the answer here.’
‘Not?’ Jay was incredulous.
‘Not.’
‘Are you the real Ves?’
‘I’m the Ves who recently spent three splendid minutes as a pancake. You decide.’
‘I withdraw the question.’
‘Thank you. I think Mauf and Rob were right: we shouldn’t spend too long here while these surges are going on.’
‘Did I say that?’ objected Rob.
‘I could see you thinking it, several times. And it’s true. We don’t know how often these surges are going to happen, and they could be dangerous. Last time, the Patels almost broke three or four limbs apiece and I seriously considered spending the rest of my life as a perfectly-cooked breakfast dish. A few more doses of that, and who knows what could happen? We should finish up our immediate business and get out.’
‘I concur,’ said cautious Jay, not at all to my surprise.
‘Fine. So we do not have time to spend a week searching the library. Which means! It’s time to play Trial and Error.’
‘Oh god.’ Jay actually backed away from me.
‘It’ll be fine.’
‘Are we still pretending the griffins don’t exist?’
‘Er.’ To be truthful, I had forgotten them a bit. Their habit of lurking (at least by report) right at the top of the very peak we were aiming for was a tad bit inconvenient.
However.
‘We’ve survived them before. Let’s go.’ I scooped up Mauf, the happy jade-green book and Ms. Goodfellow, stuffing all three into my satchel (well, the books anyway. I placed my pup into her sleep-nest with tender care). Then I marched out of the great, marble hall in the direction of the exit.
Behind me, I heard a great, weary sigh from Jay. ‘Ves. It’s this way.’
‘Right.’
In the end, we made Indira lead, which did not at all make her happy. But she was the only one of us who had yet set eyes upon this mountain.
Not that it helped much. She headed off confidently enough when we regained the street, but soon faltered and became confused. ‘The problem is,’ she said, ‘I received no clear impression of its direction from my former vantage-point. And it is deceptive.’
‘Vantage-point,’ I mused. ‘Right. Rob, Jay, would you fetch us some of those chatty chairs?’
‘On it.’ Rob dived back into the library with Jay at his heels.
‘Except not the rude one,’ I called after them. ‘The one that insulted my padding?’
They returned with two chairs apiece, and set them all before me. It was my very great pleasure to witch them up in a trice, and I say that because it was shockingly easy. Apparently I was still fizzing with magick.
No wonder people got addicted to it.
‘Hup,’ I said, hurling myself into the arms of the nearest chair. I’d chosen one with a wide seat and a thick cushion: space enough for my all-important satchel.
Up we went. There was a movement recently to mandate the use of seat-belts in all airborne apparatus, chairs included, which was thankfully shouted down, but I began to see their point when a gust of air almost upended my chair and me with it.
‘Be advised,’ I called down, my heart all a-pound. ‘Playful currents up here.’
‘To say the least,’ said Jay, rising unsteadily to my approximate level.
I turned my chair in a slow circle, and received a dazzling view of the city laid out before me like a bejewelled chess board. Its layout was not dissimilar, vaguely grid-like, with the dappled lights and darks of sturdy buildings, though the roads curved and wound their way sinuously in between.
Beyond the confines of the city spread the rest of Farringale Dell: lusciously forested, and interspersed here and there with clear, sparkling lakes. Perhaps some part of it had once been tamed and inhabited; if so, those days were long gone. The forest had reclaimed the Dell, and begun to encroach upon the streets of the city, too.
I saw no mountain.
Then, suddenly, I did. It shimmered into view, cresting the sea of broad-leaved trees like some kind of desert mirage. ‘There!’ I shouted, pointing excitedly. Clouds swirled around the peak, as advertised, lightning shooting in crackling golden coils. Griffins, presumably, lurked somewhere within.
I became aware that my announcement had not caused quite the sensation I’d expected. As I was trying to bounce out of my chair with excitement, Jay was doing the same not far away — only he was waving his arm in a different direction altogether.
So was Rob.
So was Indira.
‘Wait, wait,’ I said, and brought my chair to a hovering halt. ‘There cannot be four such mountains.’
Even as I said the words, a voice at the back of my mind said: Whyever not?
‘No!’ I said, smothering it. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Only one can be real.’
‘Or none,’ said Jay.
‘Right. Where then is the real one?’
