by Indira had flown higher, much higher. I stared up at the distant underside of her elegant chair with some concern. Given her propensity for shattering bones, I didn’t want to end up taking her home in several pieces. ‘Indira?’ I called.
‘Give her a moment,’ said Jay.
Well, if Jay didn’t feel like being older-brother-protective, far be it from me to play Mother Hen. I waited, my thoughts busy.
If Jay was right and all four mountains were illusory: why? And what was causing it? We each saw only one mountain, which meant we were each being fed a separate vision. By… something. Well, by the mountain. If it was indeed the source of magick for Farringale Dell, what might it not be capable of?
But why did it wish to hide itself?
‘If you were an age-old magickal mountain with a penchant for griffin headgear, where and why might you hide?’ I said.
Rob, having positioned himself directly below Indira, did not answer. Catching our youngest team member if she happened to plummet to her inevitable death seemed like a great priority to me, so I didn’t interrupt him.
‘For some reason, I’m having trouble fitting myself into the headspace of a rock-based landmark.’ Jay kept a close eye on Indira, too, which might not have been helping his focus.
Focus, focus. Hm.
How about if I stopped thinking of it as a mountain? Perhaps more importantly, it was (if we were right) a magickal… font, I suppose. Terms vary for such things, and we don’t truly understand them very well. To call the heart of a magickal Dell a “font” likens it to some kind of fountain, merrily pumping out magick all the livelong day, and that’s in no way an accurate idea. You can’t switch it on or off, like a tap. But Dells — capital D, because they really are markedly different from your common-or-garden dingle — grow up around such a source. It’s what makes them magickal, and sets them apart. It’s rare, but once in a while a Dell falters and dies, because its source fails. We still have no idea why. I’d been inclined to think it a consequence of the decline of magick, but we’d since learned that it happened on the fifth Britain, too, so that idea was out.
In this instance, we had the opposite problem going on. That this occurred on the fifth Britain was no surprise whatsoever; the place was bursting with magick. But for it to happen here? Different situation entirely. The Heart of Farringale Dell was in no danger of drying up; on the contrary it was prone to giving rather too freely of itself. And its former citizens had been disposed to celebrate the fact.
First point, then: did I believe that the entire Court of Farringale would go tramping many miles through forest and dale to reach this magickal mountain, on the occasion of their festival? No. They could have flown, of course, as we were doing, but that would take a lot of chairs, and anyway, nothing about Lady Tregawny’s memoirs had implied she might have been airborne for any part of it. Had they all flown, like Indira? Probably not, but maybe. Even if they had, how far could a swarm of people safely fly, even pumped up on magick?
So that suggested the mountain was situated not too far from the city, or (more sensibly) vice versa.
Right, then.
‘Indira!’ I yelled. ‘You’re my spotter.’
‘What?’ The word floated faintly back to me on the wind.
‘You see anything move, scream.’
‘Ves,’ yelled Jay. ‘What are you doing?’
This I ignored. Not because I was indifferent to my partner’s concern but because I was a bit busy.
Step one: I summoned up the strongest wards I had, and cloaked all four of us in them. I added a splash of camouflage into them this time. Whether it would help much in the circumstances I did not know, but it couldn’t hurt.
Step two: I wafted a little higher, and began a wide circle of the city. In one hand I had my Sunstone Wand; in the other, my syrinx pipes.
I took the precaution of laying a gentle sleep-spell on the pup before I began. I didn’t want her leaping out of the chair.
The melody I chose was a mixture of two distinct things: the first being the pacifying charm I had employed on our last visit to Farringale, and the second pure siren call. I’ve put a lot of time and practice into the art of pipe-playing and music-based magick over the past decade or so. You do, when you’re unexpectedly put in possession of a great Treasure and even permitted to keep it. My music soared over Farringale, haunting and alluring and calming all at the same time.
‘You’re a madwoman, Ves!’ shouted Jay, but I felt him join his magick to mine even as he spoke. The music gained in both intensity and volume, enough to spread to every corner of Farringale Dell.
‘You got a better idea?’ I yelled back.
I thought I heard a distant chuckle from Rob, but it may have been a trick of the wind.
Indira spotted something. Perhaps it wasn’t movement, for there was a distinct lack of screaming. Instead she raised one slim arm in the air, Wand in hand, and sent a burst of scintillating light flying high into the sky, like a flare. The light split and spread and poured down again, swirling chaotically around an apparently featureless stretch of dappled green-and-golden trees.
‘Gotcha,’ I muttered, and veered that way. My chair shot through the skies at dangerous speed by then; wind whipped into my face, stinging my skin, and the cold threatened to numb my lips.
As soon as I drew near to the rosy-lit trees, I began to see why Indira had lit them up. A suppressed shimmer of magick lay under every leaf, and when I got within twenty feet or so the trees themselves wavered like water.
You’d think this would have been warning enough. In my defence, I was probably moving too fast to stop in time anyway. Intent upon the maintenance of my rippling melody, I angled my chair in between the broad trunks of two ancient trees — and they disappeared in a flash. What I saw instead was the rugged, rocky expanse of an undeniably solid mountain rising steep and sharp before me.
I had about two and a half seconds to admire the view before I collided with it. The crunch was sickening.
I lay, spread-eagled and dazed, among the wreckage of my poor chair, blessing the shields which had — slightly — cushioned the fall. I only blazed with hurt almost everywhere.
‘Pup?’ I croaked, and groped for my satchel. Ms. Goodfellow came crawling out, and curled up upon my stomach.
‘Good,’ I gasped, and returned my pipes to my lips. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried playing a wind instrument when all the wind has just been smartly knocked out of you, but it isn’t easy.
Jay came bombing into view. Being forewarned, courtesy of Ves, he did not repeat my graceless performance but landed with a crisp snap and leapt out of his chair. ‘How the hell is it that you manage to keep not being dead?’ he said, at (I thought) unreasonable volume.
I waved a hand at him in a hush, you gesture. ‘They’re coming,’ I said, removing the pipes but briefly from my lips.
‘Who are— oh my god.’ A shadow passed over the sun; Jay looked up, and up, and stood mouth agape, for soaring overhead was a magickal beast straight out of legend. The size of a small ship, with a lion’s body and a bird’s plumage, it was mottled in white and tawny-yellow and red, its body wreathed in crackling lightning. Its beak was shut, talons peacefully curled as it spiralled its lazy way down to where I and my pipes lay.
Another two came wafting down behind it.
Considering that, last time, we’d been greeted with sharp beaks and claws, I thought this something of an improvement.
But Jay stood rigid as a rock, until the first griffin landed barely five feet away and he began to tremble. ‘Uh,’ he whispered, and apparently ran out of words.
I couldn’t blame him. I make it a point of honour never to visibly lose my shit, but it was difficult not to. The last time I had been in close quarters with a griffin, it had been trying to eat my face. Easily thirty times my size, this one was passive only because I played. Probably? What would happen if I ran out of breath?
Rob. Rob would happen. A dark shape flitted across the sky not far from the majestic griffins; Rob was ready, his enchanted knives in hand, to get those blades between me and the griffin if necessary.
Keep it together, Ves, I told myself. I didn’t want us to die that day, but I didn’t want any griffins to die that day either.
‘Ves,’ said Indira, very softly, from behind me. I jumped. I hadn’t seen or heard her approach. ‘Ves, you can stop playing.’
I leaned back my head, and signalled with my eyes that she was insane.
She smiled faintly. ‘No, really. It’s all right. Stop.’
Returning my wary gaze to the nearest of the three griffins, I tentatively let my song trail off. The melody continued without me, its volume a little muted, but the enchantment held.
‘The rocks have got it,’ said Indira.
Of course they did. ‘Right,’ I said, and, very carefully, sat up, resettling my unhappy pup in my lap. ‘You realise you two could rule the world if you wanted to?’ I added, addressing Indira and Jay.
‘Some other time,’ said Jay tightly.
‘Where did you get those pipes?’ said Indira.
I considered trotting out the line I’d used on Jay (classified, sorry), which was true enough, but I felt I owed Indira for the rocks thing. ‘Got them from a unicorn,’ I said nonchalantly.
Jay eyeballed me. ‘Of course you did. Would this be a good time to enquire what we’re doing playing chicken with a trio of griffins?’
‘We’re getting a good look at everything.’
‘Everything?’
‘Mountain plus occupants.’ I made a go-on motion with my hands.
Jay gave a slightly shaky sigh, and squared his shoulders. ‘Should’ve been a librarian,’ he muttered under his breath.
Indira, however, was already way ahead of him. And, for that matter, me. ‘It’s not the mountain,’ she said softly.
“It”, I supposed, meant the magickal heart of Farringale Dell, and she was right. It was a shapely and attractive mountain, to be sure, and all aflourish, but it was no magick-soaked source of one of the most potent Dells in history.
The griffins, though. Those were highly interesting.
Back in the mid thirteen hundreds, a fine fellow named Sir John Mandeville wrote a travel memoir. Val has a prized early edition in the original French, which no one — no one — is permitted to go near. In this wondrous volume, he describes the griffin thus (loosely translated): “…Some men say they have the body upward as an eagle and beneath as a lion; and truly they say sooth, that they be of that shape. But one griffin hath the body more great and is more strong than eight lions, of such lions as be on this half, and more great and stronger than an hundred eagles such as we have amongst us…” I’d now say even this princely description rather understated the case. Eight lions? Maybe triple that number, and… keep going.
They were mesmerising, terrifying, awe-inspiring — and they radiated magick. They had so much of it they couldn’t hold it; hence the gold-touched lightning that rippled and flickered ceaselessly over their glossy feathers, even when they stood, heads drooping, gently at rest.
I risked a quick glance upwards. We had attracted three. How many more were up there?
‘Is it the griffins?’ I said in awe. ‘Are they the heart of Farringale?’
