by Later, having peeled Ms. Goodfellow off the leg of the desk, pried my Curiosity out of her possession, and ushered her legion of new friends out of the door again (social butterfly, my pup), we were presented with one, meagre book by our new librarian friend. It was a thin thing, with anaemic white covers and a disappointing lack of heft.
‘It’s really not a popular topic,’ said the librarian, no doubt meaning to be kind as she demolished our mission in a mere six words.
I leafed through it. It contained annotated diagrams of an ortherex parasite and its eggs and larva, plus some notes as to its preferred habitats (rocky spaces in adulthood, especially underground, and a warm, magickal body for the eggs). Young and old alike fed greedily off magickal energies, the fresher the better, which is why they tended to collect in Dells, Dales and Enclaves.
Speaking of which. ‘Farringale is still an active Dell, isn’t it?’ I said aloud.
‘You mean in the magickal sense?’ asked Alban. ‘It seemed to be. It’s unlikely there would still be griffins living there if…’ He paused, staring into space. ‘Griffins,’ he repeated.
‘Yes?’ I prompted.
‘Griffins are as rare as unicorns, no?’
‘At least.’
‘They don’t live just anywhere, do they?’
‘No. I mean, it’s the size of them as much as anything. They need a lot of food, and a strong magickal source, especially if they’re raising young.’
‘Indeed,’ said Alban. ‘So. Where else are there known to be griffins?’
I turned back to the librarian, but Jay was way ahead of me, already asking her for every available resource on griffins.
‘And Magickal Dells,’ I added. ‘Especially the more powerful or unusual ones.’
I could see our credit as scholars was rising by the minute with the librarian. ‘Oh, we’d have lots about that,’ she enthused, and off she went.
Over the next couple of hours, our scholarly spelunkings uncovered the following nuggets of information:
1: While the Court of Farringale survived on the fifth Britain, it was not home to a colony of griffins, as ours was.
2: Griffin sightings were almost as rare on the fifth as they were in our home Britain, the sixth. But, this was not because they were rare in number. It was thought to be due to their intensely magickal nature; like unicorns, they are steeped in the stuff up to their eyeballs from birth (I paraphrase here). Not only can they bear a much closer proximity to dangerously powerful magickal energies than the rest of us, they actually thrive upon it. They need it. Ergo, griffins and unicorns both tend to populate areas in which mere humans, trolls or (arguably) lesser fae fear to tread.
3: Griffins are among the most dangerous of magickal creatures, and nobody wants to tangle with them. Whole villages have been evacuated overnight when a nesting pair of griffins made themselves at home there. But, there have also been recorded cases of griffins and other races living comfortably together without incident.
4: Related to the last point, it has sometimes been known to happen that a known magickal reservoir (a poor term, for it wrongly implies that pools of magick just lie soggily about the place, begging to be dived into, which is not at all the case; but it’s the best we have got) can undergo major, and apparently spontaneous, changes. Once in a great while, a Magickal Dell simply… dies, because its reservoirs dry up. On other occasions, the opposite can happen: a nice, mild Dell with just the right flows of magick can flare up without warning, flashing from balmy to deadly in a matter of hours. If we’re going to go with water analogies, it would be like the placid pond at the bottom of your garden turning into a small sea. Or perhaps a wide ocean. You may not love it if this happened, but creatures like griffins would.
5: This stuff is rare. Incredibly rare. But it happens.
‘What if it wasn’t really the ortherex that destroyed Farringale?’ Jay said at last. ‘What if they were flooded with magick?’
Alban nodded. ‘Which attracted griffins and ortherex alike, and drove away whoever was left alive after that.’
‘In which case,’ I said, ‘perhaps Their Majesties were essentially correct after all. This is a natural disaster. Or on the other hand: why do Dells sometimes flood? Just because no one has yet uncovered a root cause, does not necessarily mean it’s random. There haven’t been enough recorded instances of it to detect patterns, or form workable theories.’
We were gathered around a circular table in one corner of the library, ignoring a growing hunger and thirst (speaking for myself, at least) in the pursuit of Knowledge. Ms. Goodfellow had given up on us and conked out on the table top; Jay had propped a book open against her furry back. She was too deeply asleep to notice.
‘Are you still working on that conspiracy theory?’ Alban said to me, with a faint smile.
‘That somebody deliberately destroyed Farringale? Hmm. Well. I wouldn’t call it a theory, but it is a possibility that ought to be considered.’
Alban nodded. ‘When we get back to Court, I’ll see what the libraries have got about the last days of Farringale. Though I warn you not to get your hopes up too much. There really isn’t a lot.’
‘Which I can’t help thinking is significant. So important and catastrophic an event ought to have more records associated with it. It ought to have been exhaustively studied.’
‘Oh, it has been studied to death. There are endless pamphlets, dissertations and treatises waxing lyrical on a thousand possible causes for its demise. But since none of those authors had the benefit of actual access to the city itself, and because there’s so little hard evidence to base those theories on, it’s all just hot air. I suspect it’s become something of a sport by now. Who can come up with the wildest theory yet?’
‘Either way, Mel is right,’ I said. ‘If we’re correct in thinking that it’s a magickal surge that brought the ortherex, and the griffins, to Farringale — and keeps them there — then that’s what would have to be reversed in order to restore it to safety.’
‘Tall order,’ said Jay.
‘Truth. Has such a thing ever been done? Has anyone even tried?’ Our stack of books, informative as they were, had given no such indication. The few recorded occasions of magickal surges, or floods, had typically devastated a village here and there, or a small town; the inhabitants had simply moved to a new, safer spot, and gone on with their lives. Nobody had considered it worth the effort of trying to retrieve a flooded site, which told me one thing at least: there was certainly no easy way to do it.
But, we had the entire Court of Mandridore on our side.
‘We’ll have to be the first,’ said Jay.
‘I feel like a hero already.’
‘The ortherex and the griffins are an obstacle,’ Alban pointed out.
‘Right. Their Majesties will be needing significant non-troll assistance.’ I beamed at him.
‘Plus a couple of excellent griffin-tamers.’
‘A dime a dozen, those,’ I said stoutly.
‘Ves. That’s a lie.’
‘No. It’s optimism.’
Alban folded his arms. ‘Same thing.’
I winced. ‘Your cynicism is showing, your highness.’
I was rewarded with a scowl, which I felt was not undeserved.
‘I want,’ I said shortly afterwards, as we left the library of Whitmore and wended our way back up to Mel’s spire, ‘to go over the water, and see the rest of this Britain.’
‘All of it?’ said Jay.
‘Yes.’
‘That will take a while.’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay, I’m in.’ He held up his closed fist, which I bumped with my own.
‘One crazy mission at a time?’ Alban said. ‘Can we do that?’
‘Fine, fine. Farringale first, then the world.’
Jay was clutching our stack of books, with the same tenderness he might show to a puppy, or his firstborn child. He’d cared for his haul from Farringale with similar devotion. I did so like that about him. He had also undertaken to persuade the librarian to let us abscond with them, which had been no easy task. Even bandying Melmidoc’s name about hadn’t convinced her. I wasn’t sure how he had, in the end, except that it might have had something to do with that ineffable charm of his. Put anyone in a room with Jay for long enough, and they’d do anything for him.
I probably needed to work on improving my defences.
Anyway, we’d soothed the anxious librarian with promises of leaving the books at the spire, which we assuredly would, too — right after we’d given Mauf plenty of time to canoodle with them. We wanted to take their contents with us, if we couldn’t take the books themselves.
At the spire, we found Mauf deep in conversation with Mel. Loudly, too; laughter drifted through the closed door as we approached, audible even over the music, followed by snatches of some debate conducted at top volume.
‘When I said they’d get along splendidly, I didn’t know I was speaking the literal truth,’ I said as I pushed open the door, mystified.
Mauf lay sprawled in the centre of the otherwise empty hallway, his pages drifting idly back and forth. If he wasn’t a book and therefore constitutionally incapable of it, I’d have said he might be drunk.
‘Miss Vesper!’ he carolled joyfully as I stepped inside, Ms. Goodfellow trotting at my heels. ‘Pleasant greetings!’
‘Thank you,’ I said, conscious of a feeling of wariness. ‘And what have you two been up to?’
‘This fellow knows everything — everything — about the seventeenth principle of magickal dynamism under controlled conditions,’ said Mauf.
It was a specialty of mine, in my youth, said Melmidoc modestly.
The look on Jay’s face told me he had as little notion what Mauf was on about as I did.
‘We’ve been thieving,’ I said brightly, as Jay carefully set his stack of books down by Mauf. ‘With permission, I swear.’
I am astonished that Pherellina was able to provide you with such a wealth of material on the ortherex.
‘She wasn’t. Most of this is about Magickal Dells, surges, and griffins.’
Oh?
I told Melmidoc all about our fledgling theory. To my ear at least, it sounded very thin when spoken aloud. ‘I know we’ve only the most circumstantial evidence as yet,’ I finished. ‘But we’d like to investigate further.’
I have been debating within myself during your absence, Melmidoc replied. In fact, your excellent companion and I have had some conversation together upon a topic which may be of relevance to your quest.
‘Not the seventeenth principle of magickal dynamism under controlled conditions?’ I guessed.
Not that. No. This is mere rumour, a tale, one I have long dismissed as nonsense. But perhaps it is more than that.
‘Stories often contain a kernel of truth,’ I offered. ‘Sometimes a lot more than that.’
Indeed. Well, then. Some years after my removal here with my brother, and the most dedicated of our students and colleagues, it was suggested to me that we were not the only explorers from the sixth Britain to settle in these parts.
‘What!’
Yes. We, too, were interested, at least at first. But as the story unfolded, our excitement faded, for the scenario seemed to us so replete with absurdity as to be wholly uncreditable. These other refugees were trolls, supposedly, from Farringale itself. No ordinary citizens, either; they included the highest of courtiers, prominent officials and scholars — even, so it was said, the king himself.
