Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: Epilogue

by

I sat in a chair in Milady’s tower. A chair, an actual real chair; House almost never provided those, not when one was young and fit (sort of) and perfectly capable of supporting oneself on one’s own two legs.

Which I wasn’t, entirely. Magickally speaking, I’d been scrambled like a jug of eggs, and the body objects to that sort of thing.

A week had drifted by since Farringale, and I’d experienced very little of it. I’d spent an unconscionable amount of time tucked up in bed, with a stuffed unicorn under my arm and a stack of cosy romance novels at my elbow.  I hadn’t spent an entire week at rest since I’d left university.

In that, as Jay so objectionably points out, I’m not so unlike my mother after all.

‘Welcome back, Ves,’ Milady had said, very kindly, when I’d taken my place in the hot seat.

She sounded okay. ‘Thanks?’ I said, my voice breaking a bit. I was nervous.

There was no sign of Mab, of course. Her ladyship consisted, once again, of a glitter in the air and a voice that came from everywhere at once. To hear her talk, you’d think her identity remained the darkest of secrets, known to none but the privileged few (emphatically not including me).

It was a pretence I could go along with.

‘Are you… well?’ said Milady, with a most unfamiliar note of uncertainty in her smooth, measured tones.

‘Mostly?’ I said, a question more than a statement.

‘You performed an astonishing feat of magick,’ said Milady, rather generously. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that you are suffering some lingering effects.’

Lingering effects. Typical Milady understatement. I hadn’t been able to walk for three days. I still needed help to make it to the bathroom and back without folding like an ironing board. I kept crying for no reason whatsoever, and I’d flatly refused to be parted from my unicorn cuddly toy. It sat, even now, under my left arm, a soft, fluffy note of comfort in a world I couldn’t process anymore.

‘I—’ I began, and had to pause, take a shuddering breath. ‘I’m—dissatisfied with my performance.’ I managed to get all the syllables out before I dissolved into tears again.

‘And why is that?’ said Milady, still calm. Not the blaze of recrimination that I’d expected, but I was beyond the reach of reassurance at that point.

‘I—I—lost the magick of Merlin,’ I sobbed. ‘All of it. It’s still there in Farringale, down in the earth, and I don’t know how to—get it—back—’

Words failed me after that. Ophelia had been kind about it, on the whole, when I’d told her, but there had been in her face a look of such shock, such utter devastation…honestly, in future I’d rather have to admit to someone that I’d run over their beloved puppy. Or husband.

Milady waited in polite silence while I snivelled, mopped at my nose with a tissue, and—with a few inelegant, gulping breaths—contrived to pull myself together.

Then she said: ‘Ves. Why do you think Merlin’s magick still exists?’

I groped, frantically, for a vaguely intelligent answer, and came up with nothing. ‘I don’t know?’

The air sparkled: amusement, perhaps? ‘It is not merely for longevity’s sake. Those who commit their arts to the care of others—to the future—do so out of love. For magick, and all that magick can do. So. What did you do with this magick that was once Merlin’s?

‘You saved a kingdom. And not just any kingdom: one of the foremast magickal Enclaves in the country. Farringale will thrive, and it’s down, in large part, to you.

‘And it’s more than just that. You’ve proved that it can be done. In future, many more Farringales and Silvessens will be revived, and thrive. The decline of magick is over, Ves. That is the gift you’ve given to Britain—to the world—and I hope you will take pride in it, in time.’

I was crying too hard to reply. Honestly, it’s embarrassing. I haven’t cried half this much since I was six years old. Saving magickal kingdoms reverts a person to childhood, apparently. ‘Great?’ I managed, choking on a fresh wave of tears.

‘Their Majesties of Mandridore couldn’t be more thrilled,’ Milady offered, like a slightly perplexed adult hoping to bribe a sobbing child with a treat. ‘And your esteemed mother—well. Let’s just say that her unique talents are being put to excellent use.’

I could well imagine. Farringale as a hive of industry, speedily being put back together by my mother’s relentless energy and will. Hordes of talented people pulled in from kingdoms and enclaves across the country, united in their desire to drag the ancient troll capital out of the dustbin of history and into the glittering present.

Their Excellent Majesties, King Naldran and Queen Ysurra, had thus far expressed their appreciation for my efforts by way of gigantic bouquets of flowers displayed in every room I was likely to appear in (no fewer than six presently adorned my boudoir). I had received a personal letter of thanks, signed by both, and a vague but firm promise of nameless rewards to be bestowed in the future—I needed only ask.

And I appreciated it all, honestly. But whenever I thought about it, I couldn’t help but see Ophelia’s face, white with shock; her fumbling, devastated attempts to be nice about my casual sacrifice of the oldest magick in England.

Not that I had meant to. I hadn’t known what I was doing—which was typical of me, wasn’t it? Half-crazy Ves, winging it every step of the way. Well, once in a while the results were more devastating than I could ever imagine.

And—more marvellous.

‘Ves,’ said Milady, sensitive, as always, to some intangible sign of my turmoil. ‘I knew Merlin. And I think—I know—he would be proud of what you’ve done.’

I sucked in a shuddering breath, too appalled—and star-struck—to speak, at least for a moment. ‘Are you sure?’ I finally sobbed.

‘Entirely. It’s what he would have wanted.’

I was going to have a considerable cry about that, it seemed, and mercy was I tired of crying. I hoped my shattered nerves would think about recovering themselves pretty soon, or I’d—well, I don’t know. Check myself into a peaceful spa resort for the rest of my natural life, probably.

‘You made a nice tree,’ I said abruptly, apropos of nothing. ‘Fenella, I mean. Lovely.’

A pause; then Milady said, ‘You are wondering why I didn’t do that sooner.’

‘A bit.’

She took a while to reply. At length she said: ‘It is a question of…hope. That even the most…challenging of us might change, might grow. That I won’t have to forcibly deprive the Fenellas of this world of action and agency, because they can be trusted to manage themselves.’

I thought about that. Fenella wasn’t the only person I’d encountered who’d failed, again and again, to “manage themselves”, as Milady put it. ‘Do you regret it?’ I asked, rather daringly.

‘No,’ said Milady, but she hesitated as she said it, almost imperceptibly.

‘I don’t either,’ I agreed, with approximately as much certainty.

‘Get some rest, Ves,’ said Milady, after I’d palpably failed to summon words for a minute or two together. ‘There’s chocolate in the pot.’

***

There was, too. In fact there were three silver pots waiting upon the various desks and tables of my room, each ornately engraved and gently puffing steam. Pup lay curled up on my bed, blissfully asleep, and squeakily snoring.

Jay had awaited me outside the door to Milady’s tower-top room, and escorted me back down again once I’d been gently dismissed. He lent me his nice, strong arm, fussed over me flatteringly when I stumbled a bit on the steps, and thanked House very prettily when we found ourselves transported from the bottom of the stairs straight into my room without further difficulty.

Addie had made her personal displeasure with me very blatant indeed. I’d had to recruit Jay, Zareen and Indira to assist me with the steady delivery of freshly-fried chips for her personal delectation, otherwise I’m certain she would never forgive me for almost obliterating myself. It had taken thirty-three portions to date, and we were still trying.

The grove had been still less welcoming. Oh, not that it had rejected me, or anything so impolite. But I could wander about in it on two legs, now; nothing, it seemed, could restore me to my former status as a member of the herd.

Jay gently assisted me back into bed, and tucked my stuffed unicorn toy back under my arm. He was so very obliging as to plant a firm kiss on my forehead, too. He looked deep into my eyes, and said, with conviction, ‘You are wonderful, and everything is going to be all right.’

I captured one of his hands, and laced his fingers through mine. ‘Have you…’ I began.

He waited, and finally prompted, ‘Yes?’

‘Have you happened to run into Ornelle, lately?’

‘No. But I could.’

I dithered on the borders of confession, and finally broke. ‘I can’t change my hair.’

He glanced, briefly, at the mess of the hair in question, hastily combed with my fingers an hour before, and unchanged in hue since before Farringale. ‘That’s unacceptable,’ he said.

‘I was hoping—I could get my Curiosity back. The ring?’

‘I’ll get it back,’ he promised. ‘We can’t have you confined to a single colour for the rest of your days.’

I wrinkled my nose expressively. ‘Or obliged to—dye it. Do you know how revolting that stuff smells?’

‘I do, yes.’

I raised my brows.

‘Sisters,’ he explained.

I wondered which of Jay’s several sisters had undergone an experimental phase with her hair. Not Indira, anyway. ‘You’re the best,’ I declared sleepily.

Jay stroked my hair. ‘I know.’

Tears threatened again, but I was done with resenting them. I’d survived; I was alive, free to drown in the mess of my own emotions if I wanted to. For a while.

And we’d accomplished something nigh on impossible. We’d saved Farringale. Saved magick, rich and old and strange; the future, as far as I could see it, shone.

I opened my arms to Jay, a wordless request—and offer. A plea and a gift: affection, love, proffered and requested. Whatever the future might bring, I couldn’t imagine it without Jay beside me.

He didn’t hesitate. In another moment he was in my arms, the two of us as close as love could bring us. ‘What do you think we should do next?’ I murmured against his hair.

He smiled; I could feel the joy surge in him. ‘I don’t know,’ he murmured, ‘but it had better be something dazzling. I’ve developed high standards.’

I thought that over. ‘All right,’ I agreed. ‘Ply me with sufficient hot chocolate, and I can probably muster something at least a little bit dazzling.’

He did; and I did.

But that’s a story for another time.

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 18

by

‘It’s done,’ I said a little later. ‘I think. So I suppose you can go home again.’

Mum rolled her eyes in wordless contempt.

‘Not that it wasn’t amazing of you to come,’ I hastened to add. ‘Super appreciated.’

‘Farringale has been dead for centuries,’ she informed me. ‘And I don’t mean metaphorically dead. I mean actually dead. If you think it’s going to be easy to drag it into the modern world then you have bats for brains. They are going to need us.’

We were still in the library, though we’d ascended out of the cellar. We found a crowd gathered there, apparently not waiting for us: our appearance came as a surprise.

A welcome one, to Indira and Rob and Zareen. I was hugged again, quite a lot—even by Indira. ‘I found Mab,’ she said to Jay, who had not left my side. ‘She was—busy.’

‘Busy.’ Jay’s brows went up, though he spoke distractedly. I believe he was preoccupied with making sure I didn’t fall over, which was no easy task. My legs felt about as sturdy as lightly blanched asparagus.

‘There’s, um. A new tree.’ She waved a hand vaguely. ‘Where the griffins were.’

‘A new tree? Freshly minted?’ said Jay. ‘Out of what?’

‘Mab’s turned into a tree,’ I surmised, less surprised by this than I might have been a week ago. I’d rather liked being a tree, myself.

But Indira shook her head. ‘Turned someone else into a tree. Take a guess.’ She was grinning, standing there with a smile of pure mischief on her youthful face and stone dust all over her hair: a vision less like cool, reserved Indira I had never seen.

‘It’s Fenella,’ said Zareen, before I could make any sense out of my sluggish thoughts. ‘Rob took the regulator off her, which didn’t make her happy. Then she lost the griffins, too. She came back with murder on her mind, but Mab got to her. Just said “no”, like that, and “I’m afraid I have run out of patience,” and turned her into a tree. She’s a willow. Quite pretty, actually.’

‘A weeping willow,’ Jay mused. ‘Appropriate.’

‘Miranda came through, then?’ I asked. ‘With the griffins, I mean.’

‘Probably,’ said Zareen. ‘Somebody did, anyway. Rob and Melissa and that lot intercepted them. They’re coming back in now.’

‘I also, um,’ said Jay, awkwardly. ‘Stuck a tracker on Miranda’s back when she went past me. Seems she didn’t notice.’

I beamed blissfully at the wonderful man that he was. ‘You’re a wonderful man,’ I informed him, and yawned.

‘Someone get her Home,’ Zareen suggested. ‘You need a week of sleep at least, Ves. You look bloody awful.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, still beaming.

‘We’re okay to go, soon,’ Indira offered. ‘Just waiting to make sure the griffins are safe.’

‘Well,’ Jay interposed. ‘That’s what we’re doing. Your Mum’s reorganising half the world, by the sounds of it.’

I could hear her, distantly, barking orders in the crisp tone of a woman who expects to be obeyed, instantly and without question. And she was. Her Yllanfalen contingent were marching out of the library again in twos and threes, dispatched on various missions of rehabilitation.

Their Majesties would probably be pleased, on the whole. There was no one like Mum for getting things done. This time next week, she’d have it spick and span and well on the way to habitable.

‘Mum,’ I said, and repeated it a bit louder when she clearly didn’t hear me.

She appeared at my side. ‘Ves.’

I blinked at her, momentarily stupefied. ‘You called me Ves.’

By way of answer I received a blank stare. ‘And?’

‘You’ve never done that before.’

‘Did you want to say something? Because I have a lot to do—’

‘Right. Um. Surely it’s a bit late to be—you know?’ I made a hand-wavey gesture, meant to encompass the entirety of everything she and her entourage were doing.

‘Yes,’ she snapped. ‘It’s a bit late. It’s four hundred years late, to be precise, and if we want to get this kingdom rolling again there’s no time to lose.’

‘Right,’ I said meekly. ‘Carry on.’

I mentally resigned the whole problem of my mother to Mandridore. They’d asked for aid, and they had got it.

Mum stalked off, evidently forgetting my entire existence again between one purposeful stride and the next.

Jay’s hand stole into mine, a warm, strong clasp that conveyed far more than words. Faith and love. Comfort. Stability. I carried his hand to my lips and kissed it. ‘You know,’ I said mistily, ‘I really would like to go Home.’

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 17

by

The purging of Farringale took a long time; time that seemed boundless, endless, in that state, and it seemed to me that I had always been down there among the rocks and roots, a part of the city as ancient, as immoveable, as time itself—and as relentless. I ran through the undercity like a wildfire, like a plague; and when, at long last, I was spent, the city rested in a profound, half-shattered silence.

The infestation was gone. The city had suffered for it, somewhat, but it would stand: time lay spread before it in welcome, bursting with potential, with possibility. The ortherex were a part of its past, now, purged from its present and its future. The people of Farringale could come back.

Great, I thought, weakly; a ghost of something like satisfaction, like joy, passed over my exhausted heart, and faded.

I was spent. I had nothing left, which was good; nothing to draw the magick of Farringale back to me, to keep it about me. I was an echo, a whisper, everything I had once been poured into the earth and stone; and the magick followed, rippling through the city like spreading water. Mine; Merlin’s; Farringale’s; magick, old and new, sank into the bones of the city and held.

A thought stirred, distantly. Baroness? I called, weakly.

Is it time? Came the answer.

Yes.

She withdrew, out of the echoes and into the light. Somewhere above, she would be bringing her own arcane arts to bear, taking on the mantle I had so recently occupied. A griffin would sail the skies over Farringale once more, and all the latent magick of the city would rise up to welcome her.

The rest would return, too, soon enough, and Farringale would be restored in full: its people and its magick, thriving as they always should have done.

Me, though. I was—tired. I was rainwater and dirt, I was weathered stone and the roots of tall trees. I was magick, old and slow, permeating air and brick and rock.

My consciousness faltered, and winked out, snuffed as thoroughly as the parasites I had destroyed. Darkness, thick and serene, enveloped me, and I was gone.

***

The earthquake lasted long enough to shake Farringale down to its foundations. It ought to have brought the roof down on us; how the walls held I’ll never know. The whole world shook in a deafening roar of distressed stone, and all I could do was cling to Indira and pray.

It passed at last, settling into a shocked, hushed silence. Dust and dirt and plaster rained down from the ceiling, centuries of detritus suddenly dislodged. For a time I couldn’t see through it—or breathe; we pulled our shirts up to mask our mouths, and choked.

The haze dissolved, bit by bit, until I could see—somewhat. The cellar had gone dark, which, I vaguely realised, was a very good thing. That weird, sickly light was gone, which meant the ortherex were, too. Several long moments passed before my eyes adjusted, and the full impact of what I wasn’t seeing hit me.

‘Ves?’ I called. The word echoed off the blank, bare walls, and no answer came.

Indira summoned a wisp of light with a snap of her fingers. I was already scrambling to my feet, running forward, hoping against all the evidence of my eyes that I’d find her back there. Somewhere. ‘Ves!’

‘She’s not here,’ said Indira tightly.

‘What do you mean, not here. She has to be here.’ I looked around wildly, my heart pounding with fresh terror. ‘Where else could she possibly be?’

Indira looked hard at the neat, square flagstones that covered the floor, and probed at one with the tip of her shoe.

‘Gods, no,’ I gasped. But it was all too probable, wasn’t it, she’d ended up as a stone before—more than once. I might be standing on her.

I backed away from where I’d last seen Ves, horrified—and fell over something. My elbow cracked hard against the floor, my head hit the wall, and for a dazed instant I couldn’t think.

‘That’s—’ Indira darted towards me, and fell to her knees before a dim object sticking out of the stonework. ‘It’s—’

‘The lyre.’ Ves’s moonsilver lyre, the beautiful, dangerous instrument we’d unburied from Ygranyllon. I’d never seen it other than luminous, bright silver like the moon, and now it was dead and dark and embedded into the floor of the cellar like it had been there for centuries.

I grabbed it, and tugged uselessly. It didn’t budge.

‘It’s completely inert,’ Indira said, wrapping both her clever hands around its frame. ‘It’s like—normal silver. Like it never had any magick at all.’

Normal silver, swept bare of magick, and grievously tarnished. Its strings were gone; it would never play music again.

‘You don’t think…’ I stared at Indira in horror. ‘You don’t think the same thing happened to Ves?’

She stared back, appalled. ‘That she was—no. Surely not.’

Ves had more in common with Mab than the rest of us, these days: a creature of overwhelming magick. What would happen if something had taken that away? Would she end up like the lyre? Inert. Used up. Dead.

I couldn’t think about that for too long. I pushed the thought away, and clung instead to that knowledge of Ves’s recent escapades that gave me hope. ‘She’s just ended up—stuck,’ I said, with as much confidence as I could manage. ‘Like the Fairy Stone. And the chair.’

‘And the tree.’

‘Right. We just need to figure out which one she is, and—we can probably snap her out of it.’

Indira and I stared in helpless silence at the wide expanse of the cellar, paved with hundreds of identical stones.

‘We’re going to need help,’ said Indira. ‘I don’t have anything that… I don’t know how to find her.’

I didn’t either, but I hated to admit it. Hated to walk away and leave Ves there, even temporarily. Was she aware? Did she know she was stuck? She might be frightened. She’d certainly be exhausted.

‘We’re coming back,’ I said, loudly and firmly. ‘Ves? All right? We’re coming back for you.’

Nothing answered me, and another shred of hope died. I shook my head, made myself turn my back to the devastated lyre and walk away. We needed to find Milady. She would know what to do. She was Mab, magick incarnate.

I hadn’t noticed my physical state until I started up the stairs. Then it came crashing in upon me that I’d suffered through an earthquake, not to mention falling and hitting my head afterwards. I had aches and bruises in too many places, and I shambled and staggered up the stairs like an old man of ninety. Indira, spared the embarrassing fall, fared a little better, but she too groaned in protest as we started up the second flight.

When we emerged at last into the open air, breathing in great, gulping gasps, we found a darkening sky. Twilight glimmered overhead, a dim scattering of stars beginning to shimmer. A great, raucous cry split the silence, and a dark shape wheeled overhead, lightning crackling in bursts over its feathered hide.

A griffin. Despite my fear for Ves, something in me smiled, for a moment: magick was coming back to Farringale at last, the way it should always have been.

‘She did it,’ said Indira, watching the griffin’s progress as it banked and wheeled far above. ‘She saved Farringale.’

‘And now we need to save her. Come on.’ I turned away from the griffin’s majestic flight, and headed back towards the mews.

It was deserted, empty and still. No sign of Milady, or Rob, so they had moved her after all. But where to? I felt a rising frustration, and choked it down: I had to stay in control. ‘The guardian,’ I said, suddenly remembering. He had said he would watch over us, but he’d been gone by the time the earthquake had ceased. For a little while I’d forgotten him.

‘Let’s go,’ Indira agreed, and set off at a run for the library once more. I followed with a stifled groan, my abused muscles protesting at the punishing pace.

We clattered back through the streets, clambered over the remains of the wall Ves had bashed her way through when she’d been a tree. In minutes we were back on the stairs. ‘Um,’ said Indira. ‘Did you catch his name?’

I hadn’t. ‘Baroness Tremayne?’ I tried, in case it hadn’t been her we had seen in the skies. ‘Or—anyone?’

Silence, for three agonising breaths; nothing moved.

Then—

‘Yes,’ came a voice, a whisper, so faint I could barely hear it. A shape emerged, a wavering outline lightly etched upon the air. Our guardian friend, but—diminished, fighting for breath, bent almost double under the weight of a kind of suffering I couldn’t imagine.

‘Are you well?’ Indira rushed forward to help him, but her outstretched hands passed through empty air.

‘I—may be,’ he answered weakly. ‘In time.’

Time. He had already endured so much of it. ‘Is there something we can do to help?’ I asked him.

He waved this away, and said, between gasping breaths, ‘You seek your—companion.’

‘Yes,’ I said instantly, hope flaring back to life. ‘Is she—can you reach her?’

‘She’s not—’ Indira started, and hesitated over the terrible words. ‘She isn’t—gone, is she?’

‘She remains.’ Two little words, but they brought such a world of relief. ‘She remains,’ he said again, ‘but she is… distant. I do not know how to recall her.’

‘Can you tell us where Mab is?’ I tried. I wasn’t sure how I expected him to know, but he was tied into the fabric of Farringale in ways I didn’t understand. The baroness knew things, sensed things, that I never could have: would this, her fellow guardian, prove the same?

‘Mab,’ echoed the guardian. ‘Yes. Mab, old as the stones themselves. Her light is—brighter.’ He took a breath, steadied himself, and added, ‘She lingers at the gate.’

Hoofbeats interrupted anything else he might have said, and a shimmering unicorn came cantering up the street towards us, shining like the very stars and evidently pissed off. She came to an abrupt halt before me, stamped a hoof in pure temper, and snorted.

‘I know,’ I told her, not daring to touch her when she was in such a rage. ‘We don’t know where she is either, exactly, but we’re working on it.’

‘Can you take us to the gate?’ Indira said, and was bold enough to approach.

Addie stood quietly as Indira swung herself up, and snorted at me when I didn’t.

‘Okay, okay,’ I sighed, resigning myself to one more bruising, alarming horseback ride, and without the comfort of Ves to hang onto.

She was fast, though, so it was worth it. We left the beleaguered guardian with promises of an imminent return, and thundered through the shadowed streets to the gate.

A small crater made a blank, black hole in the earth, surrounded by debris: the spot where George Mercer had blown the regulator into the sky. Addie skirted easily around it, and came to a halt around the corner, near the elegant archway that marked the gate itself.

A great many people were gathered there, an entire crowd, many talking at once. After the eery quiet of the rest of the city, I found it a relief.

‘Mab,’ I was already shouting as Addie halted. ‘Please, we need Mab. Anybody seen her?’

I was answered, vaguely, in the negative, several utterances in the negative reaching my ears. Milady’s voice I did not hear, nor any other that I recognised—

No, that wasn’t true. One rose above the others, a raw, somewhat uncouth holler. Out of the milling crowd with a stride like a soldier’s came Delia Vesper.

‘Jay? Where the bloody hell is my daughter?’

‘She’s—’

‘And what the bloody hell has she been doing?’

Delia Vesper had arrived with an entourage. Half the people around her were Yllanfalen, brought, in all probability, from Ygranyllon; they were here to help.

No Mab, though.

‘She’s in trouble,’ I said. ‘We know where she is, sort of, but—well, it’s tricky to explain—’

‘Just spit it out,’ she ordered, and I did, pouring the whole story out in a muddled torrent while Ves’s mother glared daggers at me.

‘Right,’ she said when I’d finished. ‘Take me there.’

‘Can you—’

‘Just take me there, and don’t talk until we get there. I need to think.’

‘I’ll keep looking for Mab,’ Indira said, making go-forth gestures with her hands.

I went. Addie bore Delia and I back to the library with a kind of boundless energy born, probably, from rage—or fear.

The guardian was nowhere in sight when we clattered once again down the steps, and I didn’t call for him again. It had obviously cost him to materialise for us before, and besides, he’d told us all he could. It was down to me, now, and Delia Vesper.

That lady stormed into the cellar like it had personally offended her, and stood in the middle of it, staring wordlessly at the remains of the lyre. ‘Right,’ she said again, and sat down, her good hand pressed to the cold floor and her other arm draped over the lyre.

That’s right: Delia Vesper, the archaeologist (before she became a fairy queen), adept at detecting the lingering traces of past magick. The memory of it, so to speak. I waited in silent hope, hardly daring to breathe, as she did—whatever it was she was doing.

‘She is here,’ said Delia at last, and opened her eyes in order to glower at me again. ‘But it’s like she was here ten years ago, not earlier today. What exactly was it you did to her again?’

‘Er, nothing,’ I blurted. ‘Maybe that’s the problem, there was something I should have done in order to keep her—ground her, or something—but I didn’t know.’

‘Right.’ Delia tapped a fingernail against the tarnished silver of the lyre, making a tinny, rhythmic, pinging sound. ‘The problem is, the person most likely to be able to get her out of there is Ves herself. I don’t know anyone else who has the power.’

‘We thought Mab—’

‘Mab isn’t here. I am. And Cordelia is fading fast.’

‘Shit,’ I said, eloquent as only terror could make me.

‘Yes,’ Delia agreed. ‘I’m going to—’

The air flashed oddly, and fractured—I was starting to hate the way it did that, way too hard on the nerves—and a figure rippled into view: the guardian returned.

No, not the guardian—or, not the one we had spoken to before. Baroness Tremayne. And where her compatriot had been pale and faded, she was all vivid energy and colour. I knew with a sudden certainty that it had been she I’d seen in the twilit skies, revelling in magick and moonlight.

‘I can reach her,’ said the baroness, and my knees weakened in sheer relief. ‘But you must assist me.’

***

Stones dream. Did you know that? So does loam. Leaves and tumbling river-water, flowers and vines and trees—above all, trees. Everything dreams, after its own fashion.

I dreamed with it, for a time; a pebble in rich earth, a droplet of water in a downpour of rain.

Then came a sharp, fierce pain, and a bludgeoning force struck me: once, twice. Thrice.

Something grabbed me—hooked long, relentless fingers into every part of me, and, merciless, pulled.

I came forth out of the land in screaming protest, ablaze with searing agony—and then I was free, and whole, and separate, and the pain stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

I lay in a boneless, gasping heap on a very cold floor, blinking in blurry confusion at three figures looming out of the shadows.

Baroness Tremayne, straight-backed, resplendent in her wide-skirted gown: the source of the agony. And the reprieve. ‘Hi,’ I said weakly, and belatedly croaked, ‘Thanks.’

‘Ves.’ The second figure grabbed me, then thought better of it, touched me with gentle hands that shook a little. Jay. ‘Are you okay? Gods, I thought we’d lost you.’ Something was wrong with his voice: there were tears in it.

‘I’m all right,’ I told him, and said it a couple more times; he didn’t seem to be hearing me properly. I patted his shoulder, his hair, trying, with the little energy I possessed, to comfort him.

The third figure thrust itself rather rudely in upon this tender reunion: a familiar shape, with wild auburn hair and the kind of deeply-etched scowl left by three or four decades of near-permanent irritation. ‘Cordelia,’ my mother demanded. ‘What the bloody hell did you think you were doing?’

Then, to my utter astonishment, she threw her arms around me, and squeezed me so tightly I couldn’t breathe.

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 16

by

It was a close-run thing. As we drew nearer, I could see the way Indira wobbled as she sat, the currents of wind knocking her about like a stray leaf.

No time to think. We swooped, Addie’s broad wings battling a gust of wind as she banked and turned. Jay leaned—grabbed—he had her; and away we went, spiralling downwards. Strong as she was, Addie couldn’t carry three of us for more than a few minutes; we had to get her hooves on the ground, and quickly.

‘Thanks,’ gasped Indira, breathless.

‘What the hell—’ said Jay, breaking off abruptly as Addie thudded into a heavy landing. We’d come down in a street I didn’t recognise, almost too narrow for Addie’s wingspan. Tall, stone-built houses rose on either side, as empty and dead as the rest of Farringale, their small, square gardens riotously overgrown.

‘Surge,’ Indira said to her brother as she slipped lightly down. ‘Boosted me higher than I meant to go, and then the wind caught me.’ She made a whoosh gesture with one hand, most illustrative.

Jay made no reply, it being a bit late for such niceties as “you should be more careful.”

‘We were looking for you,’ I said, choosing not to get down from Addie’s back just yet. The surge roiled on, stirring all the magick in me into a dizzying whirlpool, and I was beginning to feel nauseated.

But that was a good thing; it meant we weren’t too late.

‘I was looking for you, too,’ Indira answered, and produced, from one of her air-pockets, two regulators.

No. I took a second look: three lay nestled in her palm, winking starry silver in the sunlight.

‘Rob got the one from the griffins!’ I guessed.

Indira nodded. ‘Couldn’t find you, but he found me.’

I handed mine to her, completing the quartet. Four of them. Would it be enough?

It would have to be. And to echo Jay: what we couldn’t accomplish with four, we probably couldn’t accomplish with five either.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘It’s time.’ I tasted bile as I spoke, the product of raw fear. I wasn’t ready. I’d never be ready. But if I couldn’t make this happen, who else could? Fenella? Improbable, and undesirable besides. Mandridore couldn’t be left beholden to such a person as that.

Jay slid down off Addie’s back, joining his sister on the ground. But he stayed close, and looked up at me with perfect confidence as he said: ‘Where to?’

‘The library.’ Back to where it all began; where I’d first encountered Baroness Tremayne. Where we’d found Bill, and consequently gained Mauf. The trail had begun there: those first clues leading us from Farringale to Mandridore and all the way to another Britain entirely. It was fitting that our journey would end there, too.

Jay set off unerringly, leading us in a slow procession up the near-silent street. We were silent, too, sober with the weight of responsibility, dry-mouthed with fear, light-headed with magick. When I tried to speak—some nonsense or other to break the deathly quiet—my words emerged half-strangled, a mere wordless croak.

Jay looked back at me. ‘Are you okay?’

We were a bit beyond polite lies, so I went for the truth. ‘Nope.’

He nodded. ‘We can do this,’ he said, and his voice rang with all the conviction I’d forgotten how to feel.

I smiled back, a little. ‘Let’s hope so.’

***

If the streets above had seemed quiet, the cellars beneath the library were like a tomb.

I didn’t have to walk through walls, this time—or be dragged, like a sack of potatoes. Jay found a winding way through the bare-walled chambers—stripped, now, of their precious books—along a narrow passage, and down a cramped, spiralling staircase, and we stepped out into a cool, stone-walled subterranean chamber, empty apart from the three of us, and shrouded in an unearthly silence.

I’d had to leave Addie outside, and was already suffering from the separation. But those walls were sturdy and solid, the stone very cold under my hands as I steadied myself against them.

We needed no light. A pallid, sickly glow emanated from the floor, thrown off by a writhing mass of tiny, hungry parasites. I shuddered at the sight of them, a chill of pure horror rippling down my spine. I knew they wouldn’t hurt me—they were devourers of magick and, by preference, trolls. They had no interest in a Cordelia.

Still, to set my feet into that mess of wriggling bodies took more nerve than I thought I possessed. I descended from the stairs very carefully, and paused.

Indira, behind me, made a sound of disgust, and her footsteps stopped on the steps.

‘Stay there,’ I suggested. ‘If you can deploy the regulators from up there, then there’s no need to come any farther down.’

Indira accepted this suggestion with obvious gratitude. Jay, though, visibly steeled himself, and waded into the echoing chamber to stand beside me. He waited, steady and calm, solid as the stone walls of the cellar itself.

The surge was dissipating at last, its tide of magick spent. The right moment neared; not yet, but soon. I set my lyre down on the bottom step of the stairs, near my feet. It glimmered with a pale light of its own, but a cleaner, comforting glow, and I breathed more easily for it.

‘Indira,’ I said. ‘When it’s not surging, Farringale’s latent magick runs rather low. Probably because it’s been empty for centuries. When it hits its lowest ebb… we need to use that momentum. Keep it going.’

‘Going—where?’ asked Indira.

‘I don’t know. Ebbing. Dissipating. I want it as dead as Silvessen in here.’

‘You want to strip all the magick out of all of Farringale.’ Indira spoke in tones of disbelief.

‘As close to it as we can get, yes. It’s the wild magick that’s been sustaining these things. I can’t remove them as long as they’re still feeding off it.’

‘Can you remove them anyway?’ Jay asked. ‘All of them?’

He meant how; by what possible method did I propose to obliterate a city-wide infestation of parasites? I didn’t have a clear answer, for him or for me.

‘Yes,’ I told him anyway. One problem at a time. First, the magick; then, the ortherex.

Indira said nothing more, but set about deploying the first of the regulators. I hoped her silence indicated confidence.

A tremor ran through the walls and the floor underfoot; a soft buzz of magick taking effect. Metal scraped over stone, cracking and grinding, and ceased with a jolt. ‘One down,’ said Indira.

The air split, shattered, and spat out a tall, bulky figure: too much of both to be the baroness. A male troll, simply dressed in a swallow-tailed coat and pantaloons, his hair bone-white with age. He said nothing, but his presence was imposing enough; Jay was instantly alert.

‘Wait,’ I asked him, holding up a hand. The gentleman had offered us neither violence nor threat, and a stray memory teased at me…had not Baroness Tremayne spoken of others like herself, a year ago? The long-forgotten guardians of Farringale, lingering like ghosts in the walls, had numbered three.

I bowed to the newcomer, for he bore an air of nobility about him. ‘Have you come to help us?’ I asked hopefully.

He regarded me levelly. ‘Can you in truth rid us of these creatures?’

I wished people would stop asking me that. The word “no” kept trying to pop out in response. ‘We are going to try our best to do so,’ I managed to say instead.

Another grinding, crunching, teeth-aching sound, and the walls shuddered: the second regulator.

‘I will watch over you,’ said the guardian. ‘Foes abound.’

They did indeed. I was going to thank him, but before I could speak I was wrenched out of the world, soul and body together. The room splintered around me, dissolved into the strange, juddering, shadowy alternate reality that I was beginning to despise. We were between the echoes again, one half-step to the left of the flow of time.

‘That’s one way of watching over us,’ said Jay with a grimace.

I watched Indira, poised to assist, for I didn’t think she had experienced this particular strangeness before. But she was absorbed in her task, oblivious—or at least, unflappable. A third regulator took effect: one to go.

And the environment was stabilising by the minute, the surge rushing away like the outgoing tide. The regulators were humming, a melodic fizzing in my ears, my bones. ‘Jay,’ said Indira, his name a summons, a plea, and he went to her.

I left them to it, for they didn’t need me for this. I picked up my lyre, and cradled it with momentary tenderness. I think I knew, somewhere in me, what was to come…

‘Ves,’ said Indira, softly. ‘They’re in.’

‘Good.’

‘But—I don’t know if you understand. Magick can’t just dissipate. It has to go somewhere. There’s only so much the regulators can do—’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s okay.’ I was already turning my mind away from the regulators, from the clever and capable Patels; from the library cellar, writhing with infestation, and from the silent guardian who attended our efforts to save it. I spread my awareness like a net, out through the silent ruin of the library, and down, down, deep into the rock beneath. My fingers plucked a plaintive air from the strings of the argentine lyre, each rich note reverberating through the air, through the floor, through me.

It was worse than stepping into the midst of the ortherex—worse than wading barefoot through the mess and the mass of them. As I opened my mind to the land around me, feeling the cold earthiness of rock and dirt, the clear dampness of groundwater, the bright, surprising freshness of roots winding down from above, I felt the ortherex, too: felt them like a cloak of ants crawling over every inch of my skin. They bit at me, raged at me, a million motes of wrongness and disease.

I shuddered, shaking with the effort to curb my revulsion, to hold my mind down there in that terrible space. There was too much magick, still, swirling in airy currents, like gusts of wind: I could feel it with a startling clarity, the Merlin in me recognising it, welcoming it. The magick was ancient, here; almost as ancient as Merlin himself. It called…

No. This magick was not for me; I was not for it. I was here not to lend it my strength, call it back to all its former potency, but to do the opposite: to dampen it, shutter it, drain it away. Every natural impulse in me rebelled at the idea, and rebelled again: the magick belonged here, deep in the bones of the land, and it was my task—Merlin’s task—to protect it. To help it grow.

‘I will,’ I promised it, distantly. ‘Later.’

I bore down with a will, encouraged by the pulse of the regulators around me, my lyre joining with their delicate hum, carolling a dulcet lullaby. If it could not be removed, then perhaps it could be lulled; sink itself down into the bowels of the earth, far below the beleaguered city that was Farringale.

Go, I bade it, and added, pitifully, please.

It reacted instead with a surge, a flourishing. It drew me deeper into its flow, made of me a link in its web, a thread in its tapestry of power. More gathered around me, faster and faster; I became a brightening core, a burgeoning nexus of wild magick.

Giddy gods. This was like the lyre, but worse. The magick in me—Merlin’s magick—attracted that of Farringale; like spoke to like; I was making it stronger.

A tactical error, I thought with distant hysteria. I’d been wrong. I wasn’t the best person for this task, I was the worst; what I had thought to be an advantage proved to be the opposite.

And I was stuck down deep, melded with the sleeping earth below Farringale as magick sank into the very essence of me, and shone.

This was what it was like to be a griffin. Perhaps that had been an error, too; deprived of its foci, the magick of Farringale had not disappeared, but rather altered in shape, in sense, in current; had seized me, their substitute, and would not let me go.

I couldn’t fight it. I was strong, but my strength was no asset here: together, we were stronger still, in all the wrong ways.

Well. So.

An alternative idea drifted through my labouring thoughts, and at first I rejected it, utterly and completely. Every cell in me revolted at the notion, strained as I already was. The regulators were beginning to affect me, too, merged as I was with magick: they pulled at me, dragged at me, smothered the spark of my life in thick, grey dullness.

I didn’t have much time. I couldn’t say what would become of me, under all these competing forces, but I felt frayed like an old blanket, coming apart at the seams. There wouldn’t be much of me left, soon.

I searched my sluggish mind for another idea, any idea at all, and found nothing. There wasn’t another option.

Focus, Ves. I could bear it—probably. Hopefully.

In the space of a single breath, I stopped resisting the influx of magick, stopped pushing against it, stopped warding myself against the inexorable onslaught. If it wanted me, very well: let it have me. All of it.

I opened myself to it entirely, without barrier, and it came to my call: a vast, onrushing flood of it, drowning me in power—in possibility—in life. I had drowned like this once before, in Vale, when I’d first taken up the lyre; but this, this, was as the ocean to a lake: unimaginably immense, and far beyond my capacity to contain.

Were it not for the regulators, and the griffins’ absence—had I attempted it with the surge at its highest—it would undoubtedly have destroyed me.

As it was, I held it—barely, and briefly; I needed only to focus my attention, frame my intent, fix everything I had upon that other devouring sea, the ortherex.

Power arced about me in a haze of lightning, lethal starfire exploding from the very core of me, setting me alight; I screamed, and screamed again, but it wasn’t agony, not quite—

As all the magick of Farringale spiralled and built and blazed around me, I gathered one last surge of will: let it blaze, then, let it burn.

Magick tore through me, and I shattered; into a thousand motes, into a million. A current ripped through Farringale, stronger, far stronger, than even the most potent of its surges: stones thundered and crumbled around me.

And with every pulsing wave that shuddered through the ground, ten thousand ortherex flared with starfire, and winked out.

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 15

by

‘You will need the regulators,’ said Milady, unruffled now, and resolute. Magick shone in her green gaze as she looked at me, and I wondered. Had she had one of her hunches about this? Some prophetic dream? In the midst of everyone else’s surprise—or horror—Milady had been an ocean of mildly disapproving calm.

But then, so was she always.

‘They’ve got one in there with the griffins,’ Jay pointed out. ‘Indira’s got two with her and I hope they’ve secured the other one Ancestria Magicka stole. Can you manage with three?’

I have no idea was the honest response, but there was no room to be feeble-minded now. ‘Yes,’ I said stoutly.

Jay, more sensibly, said: ‘Well, if we can’t do it with three then I don’t suppose we can do it with four, either,’ and he wasn’t wrong.

‘Where’s Indira?’ I said. I felt a terrible sense of urgency, of time rushing past and events spiralling more out of our control by the minute. As soon as the griffins were out of Farringale, we had to be ready to act. Fenella wouldn’t leave us much time, not when it became apparent that we weren’t going to simply walk away and leave her to it.

‘I don’t know,’ said Jay, tersely.

‘She is at the bridge,’ said Milady serenely.

How did she know? I saw the question unfurl across Jay’s face, but he didn’t ask it, and neither did I. Mab had her ways.

‘The same bridge that was guarded by several giants and trolls?’ Jay said instead, concern replacing curiosity.

‘She is well,’ said Milady. ‘And I believe she has—’

The ground shifted underfoot, and buckled; for a dizzying instant, the world spun, shimmering like a wave of heat. Milady gasped, and crumpled. I tried to run to her side, but the street tipped sideways and fell on me.

When I opened my eyes again I saw Jay’s face outlined against the clear sky, grim and silent.

‘What happened,’ I croaked.

‘You and Milady fell. I don’t know why.’

I sat up, clutching at Jay. Waves of magick, pure and deep and wild, pulsed through the ground underfoot, each striking me like an electric shock. ‘It’s a surge,’ I gasped. ‘But different. Much—worse.’

‘It only seems to be affecting you and Milady,’ Jay said. ‘Or, mostly. I’m not feeling very much—’

‘Mab is a being of pure magick,’ I said, choking on the stuff as I spoke. I attempted to climb Jay like a tree, the better to regain my feet; he grasped my arms, and helped me up.

‘Apparently, so are you,’ he observed, steadying me.

‘No, but—close to it.’ That, I thought, was the problem: I had so much magick woven through my being that I couldn’t help but be deeply affected. I felt stirred like a bowl of porridge—whisked like a bucket of eggs—Gods, I could hardly form a coherent thought.

‘The griffins are gone,’ gasped Milady, both her hands pressed palm-flat against the earth of Farringale, and her eyes alight with its magick.

‘Already,’ I breathed. ‘I thought we’d have more time—’

‘Ves,’ said Rob urgently, and there was a world of meaning in the word, the tone. You need to move, it said. Now.

He was right. My Society had trusted me. Farringale needed me. I couldn’t let them down.

I felt a moment’s sharp regret for the griffins, and smothered it. I didn’t have time to worry about them now. That was Miranda’s task. I had to focus on mine.

But first, I needed to clear my swimming head.

I considered the lyre, and discarded the idea. Not yet. Not now. Instead I dug out my syrinx pipes, and blew a piercing, jagged trio of notes upon them. The harsh sounds split the air in a discordant jangle, carrying my message to Adeline. Help. Help me.

‘We need Indira,’ I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. ‘We need Baroness Tremayne. And we need every regulator that’s available. If that’s three—two—so be it.’

The surge was still building; we had a little time. But not much. As soon as it ebbed, I needed to be ready.

The air split, and Baroness Tremayne stepped out of nothing. ‘I am here.’

‘I’ll need your—shape-shifting,’ I told her. ‘Soon.’ Conceding the griffins to Fenella’s care left me with a problem. If we weren’t the ones who had taken them out, then we couldn’t decide when to bring them back, either.

The baroness asked no questions, merely nodded her assent, and vanished again. I hoped—trusted—she would stay close, somewhere beyond my perception.

‘We need all the regulators,’ Rob said. ‘Whether you use them or not, Ves, they can’t be left in Fenella’s hands.’

Right. She’d be trying to use them herself. I mentally heaped curses on Fenella Beaumont’s head.

‘She’ll have taken one of them with her,’ Jay warned.

He was right about that. The shifting of that regulator, and the removal of the griffins, had probably caused—or at least were contributing to—the surge. ‘One problem at a time,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to—immobilise her. Later.’

And here came Addie, arrowing down out of the sky in a burst of light. She landed heavily, kicking up a spray of earth, and came for me at a gallop. I grabbed for her, hauled myself onto her back; as soon as my fingers touched the soft velvet of her hide I began to feel better. She balanced me, settled the sickening swirl of magick, and my head cleared. I’d still like a sunny afternoon at the grove for optimum results, but it would do.

‘Right,’ I said, straightening my back. Everything in me ached, like my bones were on fire. ‘Time to work.’

I expected words from Milady, instructions, orders, but she lay prone still, like a fallen flower. She would recover—when Farringale did.

Rob was looking at me, expectant. So was Jay, and Melissa, and—everyone.

I swallowed panic, and thought furiously. They were waiting for orders—from me. Right, then. ‘A few people need to stay with Mab. If you can safely get her out of here, do so. Jay, with me. We’re making a run for Indira. Rob and team: see if you can secure the missing regulator from Fenella. If not, please obstruct her by any reasonably fair, mostly non-violent means available. I need space to do this.’

‘Reasonably fair,’ Rob said, and nodded.

‘Mostly non-violent,’ added Melissa, and smiled, not at all nicely. I didn’t pursue the point. No one would be shedding tears if Fenella emerged with a bruise or two.

Jay swung himself up behind me, like a pro. The days when he’d shied away from riding horseback seemed a long time ago, and I suppose they were. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Which way to the bridge?’

Jay pointed, and we were off, Addie’s hoofbeats thundering against the dry earth like the drums of war.

***

At the bridge, chaos reigned. We came barrelling around a corner at a ground-eating canter and nearly ran into the prone form of one of the giants; Addie jinked around the obstacle at the last moment, the abrupt movement nearly hurling Jay off her back. The giant’s thunderous snores proclaimed him asleep, not unconscious, and I remembered the last time I’d seen Indira: she’d pressed several of Orlando’s sleep capsules into my hands. I still had them.

Indira had put hers to good use, for several other bodies, still as corpses, littered the narrowing white street. Some kind of pitched battle had taken place for control of the gate, but we’d missed most of it. There were people everywhere, spread across the street in a disorganised, struggling mass.

I couldn’t immediately tell who was winning, and for a moment everybody seemed a faceless stranger; I recognised none of the people I saw. My heart sank. Were we too late?

Then Zareen came surging out of a knot of people at a dead run, heading for… oh no, that was George Mercer, face set in a rictus of angry determination, Wand raised—for a horrible instant I felt a stab of fear straight to the heart: Zareen wasn’t—she wouldn’t—

No, of course she wouldn’t. Miranda had made me paranoid. Nothing in Zar’s face registered a welcome—in fact she looked angrier than I’ve ever seen, ready to tear his face off with her fingernails—it took me a second to realise why—and I was too late, we were both too late, for Mercer made a smashing motion with his fist, his Sardonyx Wand catching the light in a black slash, and with a shattering boom the earth exploded.

A massive spray of earth and stone soared skywards—cries of pain rent the air as the dislodged paving stones hurtled down again, striking friend and foe alike.

And something else went flying into the sky—something that glinted eerily silver, flashing like a falling star.

The regulator.

Mercer, in a shattering display of bullish brute force, had blasted the thing right out of the earth. He needed only to catch it, and run…

But Zareen knew George Mercer, and she’d seen it coming. If I’d thought she’d been planning to attack him, I was wrong: with a gravity-defying leap, she snatched the regulator out of the sky, and collided heavily with him on the way down. They fell in a tangle of dirt and stone and limbs but Zar was up again in seconds, ruthlessly smashing Mercer’s face into the earth as she went.

‘VES!’ she yelled. I thought she’d pitch the regulator at me, but she didn’t trust it to the skies again. She tore towards us on foot, dodging felled and sleeping trolls, piles of shattered stones and three unwise people who attempted to intercept.

I spurred Addie forward and we galloped to meet her, clearing a snoring giant in one flying leap.

Too late—Mercer was up—however fast Zareen could run, he was faster. He’d be on her before she could reach us.

With a snarl of pure fury, Zareen threw herself forward in a perfect and utterly reckless rugby tackle. She fell heavily, with a sharp cry of pain—but cool metal stung my fingers, and my hand closed on intricately-worked argent.

‘Get it out of here!’ she roared, looking ready to tear my face off if I didn’t obey.

No fear of that. ‘Up!’ I ordered, kicking at Addie’s flanks, and we were airborne, winging away from the carnage at the gate with the regulator securely clutched in my fist.

‘That woman must’ve been a terror on the lacrosse pitch,’ I gasped, half winded.

‘Indira!’ Jay shouted in my ear, pointing. ‘There.’

The distant shape could have been a bird—I’d have taken it for such—but I trusted Jay. And he was right: the dark blur was bombing towards us at reckless speed, and soon gained a more distinct shape. Indira, not demonstrating improbable powers of flight, however it may appear, but seated rather precariously atop a witched slab of something stony, and hurtling our way.

‘What the bloody hell—’ yelled Jay in my ear. ‘She’ll fall.’

She looked like she might, any second, and she was far too high up. If she fell, she’d die.

‘Right,’ I said, and spurred Addie on to lightning speed. We had to catch her—now.

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 14

by

‘You’re saving Farringale,’ I repeated, with perhaps an unwise emphasis on the first word. I was conscious of a stir around me: a reaction from the assembled Society, but I couldn’t turn to gauge what it was. I kept my attention on Fenella.

‘Of course,’ she said grandly. ‘Urgent work, I am sure you must agree. The Court won’t thank you for getting in the way of it.’

‘Oh? You’re here on the authority of Mandridore, are you?’

‘Of course,’ she said again, to my great surprise. I’d expected hedging, deflection, excuses, but not a bare-faced lie.

For an instant, I wondered if it might be true. The king at Mandridore had tasked us with rehabilitating Farringale, if we could; might they have contracted Ancestria Magicka to do the same? From their perspective, the end goal was important, not the tool they used to achieve it. It was plausible.

But I remembered the patent horror with which the Court had heard the news of Fenella’s incursion. The urgency with which they’d appealed for aid. It was possible they had employed Ancestria Magicka, and that grubby organisation had betrayed them—but I didn’t think so. More likely a lie.

But a believable one. Now I understood how Fenella had recruited trolls to her cause.

‘That is untrue,’ I said. ‘We’ve just come from Mandridore, and they certainly didn’t send you.’ Futile, really; my word against hers; their word against ours; people would go on believing whatever they wanted to believe.

Fenella waved this away with visible scorn. ‘I suppose you’d like me to believe they sent you.’

As though it was so far-fetched a possibility, considering she’d called me Merlin herself. ‘What’s your plan?’ I said, tiring of the tit-for-tat.

Fenella, off-balance, blinked at me. ‘What?’

‘Your plan. For saving Farringale.’ I swept an arm out, indicating the sorry state of the noble griffins, the clusters of her people guarding the mews, and the expanse of our people ranged in opposition. ‘This is all part of it, I suppose?’

I was curious to see whether the whole story was a lie; the “saving Farringale” a story spun to justify the looting, the thieving. Or was there some truth to it after all?

‘I’m sure you don’t need me to explain it to you,’ she answered, which was a cop-out, but also true. I didn’t.

I was looking at everything they’d done in Farringale with fresh eyes. What they’d done to the griffins.

If we—I—wanted to restore Farringale, we had to neutralise its wild magick, which meant neutralising—temporarily—the griffins. Is that what they were doing?

And what of the library? Had they been looting it, or extracting it prior to potentially damaging magickal procedures?

They’d stolen our regulators from Silvessen, but not, apparently, to sell them, or even to copy them (though I’d be willing to bet they’d be doing the latter at some point). They’d brought them here, to Farringale, and—used them. Hmm.

‘And what happens once you’ve saved it?’ That was Jay, his tone ringingly sceptical. ‘Who gets control of it?’

‘Why, Mandridore, of course,’ said Fenella, sweetly.

I sighed, frustrated. It might have been true; it wasn’t hard to imagine the kind of fame and favour they could win by such a feat. The Troll Court would owe them for generations.

It might have been a lie, too; I wouldn’t put it past Fenella to covet a small kingdom of her own, given half a chance.

We had no way of knowing, and we were wasting time arguing about it. I opened my mouth to say—I don’t even know what, I was running out of ways to counter such slippery insincerity from Fenella—but at that moment Milady materialised, as if from nowhere (and, being Mab, she might have).

Her abrupt appearance caused a fresh stir, on both sides—and stopped Fenella cold. It helped that she was laying it on rather thick, hovering at near eye level with the proud leader of Ancestria Magicka, her wings a glittering blur. She shimmered with myth and magick, a palpable power beyond anything most of us had ever experienced. She inspired the purest awe—and, I hoped, a modicum of fear.

For the first time, I detected uncertainty in Fenella’s face. She knew a great many things she shouldn’t have, but she had not discovered this secret.

Milady spoke, and her voice rang with all the power and majesty of a legendary queen. ‘Fenella Beaumont.’ The syllables rolled and echoed, like suppressed thunder. ‘This is not your task to perform.’

Fenella straightened her spine, lifted her chin, and stared right back at Mab. ‘I say the task belongs to anyone who can perform it successfully.’

‘And can you?’

‘Yes,’ said Fenella, without hesitation. Bravado? Or did she truly have a workable method?

A pause. Then Milady spoke—Milady again, not Mab; those low, calm, soothing tones I’d heard so often at the top of the tower at Home. ‘In that case, you will agree to a co-operation pact.’

‘We require no assistance,’ said Fenella, instantly, and with scorn.

‘You may enjoy our assistance or endure our opposition,’ replied Milady coolly. ‘You will, of course, make the wisest decision.’

I wanted to object. They were not to be trusted; they had not honour enough to keep to their promises. They would pretend cooperation, and then betray us at the first opportunity.

I needn’t have worried, however. Fenella had not the wisdom Milady credited her with, nor the guile I’d expected. ‘There will be no cooperation,’ she declared. ‘Farringale is in safe hands. Ours.’

Another pause. This was not the response Milady had expected; she did not have an immediate answer to offer. Tension built; Rob and his team shifted, gathering themselves, preparing to oppose Fenella with force, if necessary.

A terrible prospect, and one Milady had always dedicated herself to avoiding. The Society did not cut swathes through our opponents, maiming at will; we certainly did not kill.

But we could not simply walk away, and leave Farringale in their hands. Theirs were not safe hands; never that. If they would not work with us, then we would have to remove them—by any means possible.

Rob lifted his Lazuli Wand, letting Fenella see it. He was legendarily fearsome with it. ‘Release the griffins,’ he said, deadly quiet.

Fenella levelled her own Wand at him, stared defiance. Giddy gods, had she such unshakeable faith in the might of her own people? Or was this foolish recklessness, an inability to admit herself bested?

Was she bested? I felt a creeping sense of unease, felt it radiating from Jay beside me. We didn’t know the extent of either her forces or the powers they mustered between them. We’d seen giants at the bridge, and trolls; we knew she had the likes of Katalin Pataki and George Mercer at her disposal. As to what, or who, else… we were woefully underinformed.

What if we were the ones outmatched, and unable to see it?

‘Stop,’ I blurted. ‘Please. Wait.’

Everyone looked at me. The combined weight of so many surprised, shocked, wondering, tense, frightened, enraged gazes made me shrink, for a moment, bowed under the combined pressure.

And it made it so much harder to continue. Milady wasn’t going to like what I had in mind; the glimmers of a plan so risky I felt nauseated from the strain of it.

But it was that, or—disaster.

‘You’re right,’ I said to Fenella. ‘The important thing is that Farringale is saved, and if you’ve got a surefire way to do that then you should go ahead and do it.’ I was babbling a bit, not at my most eloquent by a long shot: but I was committed now, and rushed on. ‘I expect you’ll be wanting to take the griffins out of here, and we won’t oppose you, but as a gesture of good faith we would like to offer you the assistance of one of our best agents. She’s a world expert on the care and handling of magickal beasts, including mythical ones, and will assist you very creditably in keeping them safe and well.’

There, let her refuse that without losing face. She could hardly reject my offer, not without undermining her own claim to be “safe hands” for Farringale—and the griffins. I couldn’t see Miranda in the crowd, but knew she must be somewhere nearby. She’d stay as close to the beleaguered griffins as she could.

Jay was silent at my side, rigid with tension and (probably) anger. He wasn’t questioning me, he wouldn’t undermine me in front of Fenella. But he had, must have, grave doubts. I could only hope he—and Milady—would trust me.

I could only hope I deserved to be trusted.

Fenella took several long, terrible moments to consider my proposal, and I couldn’t breathe for fear that she would decline, this too—or that my own people would break, that Milady would publicly overrule me.

‘Very well,’ said Fenella, though the questioning look she cast at Milady showed how well she understood the limits of my authority.

I waited in fresh agonies for Milady’s response. Would she trust me this time? Could she? What I asked required a huge leap of faith, and I couldn’t explain why—

‘Stand down, Society,’ said Milady, softly, and I could almost have wept with relief—and panic.

We were committed. Now I had to make it work.

Miranda went past me, heading straight for the griffins, now she had official leave—directing at me a tense, questioning look en route. I met that gaze squarely, trying, probably futilely, to telegraph reams of thoughts with a mere glance: keep the griffins safe. Stay close to them. Tell us exactly where they’re being taken.

I knew she would perform the first two without question, but the latter? I was gambling on Miranda, too, on the chance that her confused loyalties had settled: that she was a Society agent again, through and through.

Nothing in her face told me whether or not I was right to put faith in her. Time would tell.

A great deal happened after that, and quickly. Milady mustered our people, and pulled them back; Fenella consolidated hers around the griffins, now surrendered into her dubious care.

Jay bristled with something: either rage or fear, I couldn’t tell. I followed him over to Milady, and Rob, and about thirty other Society agents all staring at me like I must be crazy. Or a traitor.

We fell all the way back, leaving the mews to Ancestria Magicka, and regrouped at a safe distance. Handsome townhouses rose on either side of me, looming in judgement, empty windows staring out of stuccoed facades.

‘Well?’ said Milady.

Jay, beside me, didn’t move, or barely so. But he’d stopped very close to me: his arm pressed against mine, a reassuring pressure. He might think I was crazy, but he was standing beside me anyway.

My courage rose.

‘The thing is,’ I began. ‘She’s right. Someone’s got to save Farringale. We can’t just leave it like this, and now we have the technology to—’

‘Our objective in coming,’ interjected Milady, severely, ‘Was to eject Ancestria Magicka, and reverse any damage they may have caused. That is all.’

‘I know, but we can’t do that without a fight, a very damaging one, which nobody wants, and we might be—we might be the ones driven out. But if the griffins aren’t here—’

Rob said, in a voice of controlled anger, ‘Ves, the griffins are not safe in Fenella Beaumont’s hands. She’ll never return them. You cannot conceive how priceless they are—’

‘I know, which is why I sent Miranda with them. She’ll see to their safety and make sure we know how to get them back, later. We didn’t come prepared to remove them, but they did, so it’s actually quite perfect. And in the meantime—’

‘Later? She could take them away and kill them and there would be no later—’

‘She won’t. Not when they’re so priceless. Please, Rob. I’m going to need your help.’

He eyed me with a look of frank disbelief, a boundless exasperation, and my heart sank.

Milady hadn’t relented either, and I couldn’t blame her. At last she said, ‘Ves. Are you certain you can do this?’

I was silent for a second, in consternation, the full enormity of what I proposed to do settling over me like a leaden cloak. Was I sure? Truly?

‘With the right help,’ I said, mustering my courage. ‘Yes, I think I can.’

Milady nodded once, and that was it. We were committed. I was committed.

Giddy gods. What had I done?

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 13

by

‘Ves. Thank goodness—I think? Are you okay? Gods—’ Jay was babbling, most unlike him, but he swept me into a fierce hug and somewhere in there I managed to stop screaming.

‘I’m okay,’ I said thickly against his chest, and I was—mostly. I was feeling an odd mix of profound relief and a strange desolation. For while the baroness had saved me from eternity stuck as a Fairy Stone, she’d also torn me out of the most profound peace I’d ever experienced in my life.

And now here I was, in Farringale, with a lost city to save and a few hundred people embroiled in fervid struggles around us while we did it.

It took me a few deep and tremulous breaths to pull myself together. Jay too, probably.

‘Any chance you could stop turning yourself into inanimate objects?’ said that gentleman after a while.

‘I may not have looked it, but I was fairly animate,’ I protested. I’d held a conversation, at least. A bit. Sort of.

‘That was not animated. This—this­­—is animated.’ Jay grasped both my arms and moved them about, most illustratively. ‘I prefer this.’

‘Me too,’ I sighed, meaning it more than I didn’t. I straightened, gently disentangling myself from Jay. ‘Right. Where are we at.’

‘Farringale Dell,’ Jay answered promptly, all business again. He pointed. ‘City’s that way.’

For once, I didn’t even need him to tell me. I could feel it, the deep, irresistible pull of Farringale’s wild and roiling magick, a lodestone I couldn’t have missed if I’d tried.

I took a proper, long look around, having scarcely noticed my surroundings before. Peaks and valleys, the sort they  had in mind when they coined the phrase “rolling hills”. Landscape like a rumpled blanket, lusciously green, and—intriguing, this—laced still with that latent sense of ancient power, a tapestry of memory and magick. Would I always be so alive to these things from now on? Or was it the temporary effects of having played the—

‘The lyre,’ I blurted, rigid with horror. ‘I’ve lost the lyre.’

‘At your feet,’ said Jay calmingly.

There it was, indeed, and being a magickal object of indescribable power and unimaginable antiquity it wasn’t just lying there on its side, patently dropped by a careless hand (mine). It stood tall and proud atop a nicely flattened rock, as though I had placed it there myself with tender care, and it was playing some silent melody to itself: its glittering strings visibly vibrated.

‘I’m not sure I should be trusted with any more irreplaceable artefacts,’ I decided, though this one seemed to be able to take care of itself. ‘Will you carry it?’

Jay picked it up, gingerly, and stood frowning. ‘I think,’ he said after a moment, ‘that you’ll have to take it after all.’ He held it out to me.

I eyed it doubtfully. It shone at me, enticingly, radiating magick in most tempting fashion; but then it tends to do that. Nothing unusual there.

‘It’s singing at me,’ Jay elaborated.

‘And that isn’t a good thing.’

‘Emphatically not a good thing.’ Jay winced as he spoke, as though his teeth hurt.

The fact that I’d dropped it apparently didn’t mean that the lyre and I weren’t still all tangled up together. I took it from Jay’s hands feeling only slightly aggrieved. It played me a joyous ode, which mollified me—a little. ‘Everyone’s gone,’ I observed, for we were entirely alone on the windswept hillside.

‘Gone into the city, and we should follow. Are you ready?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Me neither.’

Jay set off, striding grimly over hill and dale like a modern-day Heathcliff. Breathless with magick and panic and admiration, I trotted in his wake.

***

Heading into the teeth of that magickal mess was like wading into the ocean against the incoming tide. It beat at me, waves of it, relentless as the sea—and all the while, the sense of irresistible force, an undertow waiting to sweep me up and drown me in it.

If it weren’t for Jay just ahead of me, advancing upon it like a human wrecking ball, inflexible as death itself, I might have turned tail and fled like a frightened hare, lyre and all. We could’ve been happy, me and the Yllanfalen Lyre. In Barbados, possibly, or the Seychelles.

But if Jay could face Farringale, so could I. We could face it together.

We had to.

The gate into Farringale city looked so much like an actual entrance I was almost disappointed. No cunningly disguised rocks or airy archways of subtle magick; this one was obviously and unabashedly a door. A grand one, to be sure: ten feet tall and wrought from solid granite, with a set of double doors occupying an ornately carved frame. They looked like they’d been there since the dawn of time, and hadn’t been opened in almost as long.

I wondered how the first teams to reach them had contrived to get them open, but they had: one stood far enough ajar for a human to slip through, if not a troll. I glanced through, and saw nothing but a white mist, like dense fog.

‘I’ll go first,’ said Jay, and went, without even waiting for me to reply.

‘Wait—’ I began, but too late. He was gone, leaving me alone with the hills and the doors and the lyre and the mist.

‘Damnit,’ I muttered. Nothing for it. I grabbed what passed for my courage with both hands, and stepped into the fog.

Jay caught me on the other side, physically grabbed me. Presumably before I could manage to wander off and get myself lost (plausible). ‘The doors lead right into the centre,’ he told me. ‘We’re near the library.’

Or what was left of it, after Ancestria Magicka and I were finished with it. I blushed a little at the recollection: had I knocked down a wall on my way out? I might very well have.

‘Which also means,’ he continued, ‘we’re near the mews where the griffins were being kept.’

I read the unspoken question in there. Now that we’d made it inside, what did we want to do? Milady hadn’t assigned us to any particular unit, nor given us any particular task.

I knew why. My not-so-secret personal mission, mad as it was: I’d personally declared war on the ortherex. Milady hadn’t endorsed it, but she hadn’t forbidden it either. She’d left Jay and me free to choose where we placed ourselves and our talents.

I chose to conclude that a lack of active opposition from Milady was as good as support, as far as Jay’s reservations were concerned. And I’d go on thinking so unless and until he clearly stated otherwise.

I chewed a thumbnail, thinking. If I wanted to purge Farringale of its infestation, how would I even do that?

They were feeding off its wild flows of magick, or so we had theorised. It was those surges of power that kept them here, oddly static, like the rest of the city. If I wanted to remove them, I’d have to take away their source of sustenance.

I’d have to take the magick out of Farringale. All of it.

A thought I’d been shying away from ever since the emergency council at Mandridore. It was too insane, even for me; too vast, surely, to be accomplished, even with all the magick of Merlin at my disposal.

I didn’t want to consider the possibility that I couldn’t do it, at all—that it wasn’t within my power, or anyone’s. Because that would mean accepting defeat. There wasn’t a way to save Farringale for the trolls without clearing the ortherex, and as long as they had all the deep power of ages to feed upon, they’d be here forever.

We had to find a way, or give up on Farringale. And I wasn’t prepared to do that.

I looked at Jay, and his face told me he knew. He hadn’t mentioned the griffins at random. ‘We’ve got to get them out of here, haven’t we?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

The griffins, bound up inextricably with the magickal ebbs and flows of Farringale. The very heart and soul of it, the core; without them, magick would wither and die, and Farringale Dell with it. And they’d been resident here for more centuries than I could imagine.

Taking them out—all of them—I didn’t even know what that would do to the city. But I knew that I couldn’t perform my nigh-impossible task in the face of all their terrible power.

‘Miranda’s team went straight there,’ Jay said. ‘With Rob’s. They’ll be—I don’t know what they’ll have done by now.’

‘And Indira?’ I asked.

‘Retrieving the regulators. Plus she’s got two more that Orlando rushed.’

Good. We’d be needing those. Four might be… enough. Perhaps.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

***

We passed few people on our way through the contested streets of Farringale, at least at first. The combated areas were elsewhere; nobody had cause to care about the library anymore, not now I’d emptied it of its treasures.

Nonetheless, the atmosphere of the city couldn’t be more different from our first visit. A palpable tension set my teeth on edge, a sense of urgency, of menace; and the magick of Farringale tossed and roiled like the sea in a storm. It dizzied me, threatened to overwhelm me—what in the name of all the gods had they done with the regulators? Not to mention the griffins—Jay had to steady me several times when I threatened to topple under it.

The lyre wasn’t much help. I felt like a tree trapped betwixt two hurricanes, each of them trying to tear me to pieces.

When we neared the griffins’ makeshift prison, the fraught peace quickly shattered. I heard a tumult of voices raised in conflict, and a terrible, sharp, raucous cry that could only have come from a griffin. Jay and I quickened our steps down a widening street, passing towering townhouses of brick and stone at a near run.

The mews had become a battleground. We tore into an open square, lined on three sides with large, brick-built stable blocks. I counted four griffins still captured, chained and enchanted, unnaturally placid. People were everywhere, I couldn’t tell how many were ours, and how many Ancestria Magicka.

I recognised Fenella Beaumont, however, poised beside her imprisoned griffins like a queen holding court. She was dressed all in black, tight trousers and jacket, with her grey hair tied back: practical attire for taking over a city.

She had a Wand out, something emerald, by the look of it, and she was pointing it at Rob.

Rob, unmoved, had his own Wand trained on her right back. He was flanked by his entire team, but then so was Fenella. We had a stand-off going on.

I looked for Indira, or Zareen, but didn’t see them.

‘Release the griffins,’ Rob was saying, calmly but firmly. ‘You are surrounded. Reinforcements are imminent. You cannot win this.’

Fenella looked by no means ready to accept defeat, and I wondered afresh what her plan had actually been. If her only goal had been to empty the library, well, she and her organisation should be long gone by now. They’d have no further reason to stay.

But they’d seized control of the gate, and the griffins. Something else was afoot, something much larger. Surely she hadn’t thought she could get away with occupying Farringale?

‘We’re so close,’ Fenella said angrily, which wasn’t an answer to anything Rob had said. ‘Let us work, Rob Foster. We’re doing great things—things the Society can only dream of—’

‘Oh, balderdash,’ I interrupted, and stepped forward. ‘What could you possibly be doing that involves imprisoning the—’ I stopped, because as I spoke a horrible thought entered my head.

Fenella’s eyes glittered with rage at sight of me. ‘Ah, the great Merlin,’ she said nastily. ‘You should have joined us when you had the chance.’

I didn’t waste any time wondering how she’d heard about my new role: expecting to keep anything much from the knowledge of these sneaks was clearly futile. Ignoring her remark, I said, warily, ‘What exactly is it you think you’re doing?’

She smirked at me. ‘Can’t you guess?’ And I could guess, of course I could: for weren’t the Society and Ancestria Magicka like opposite sides of the same coin? I heard, with a horrible sense of inevitability, the expected words fall from Fenella’s smirking lips: ‘We’re saving Farringale.’

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 12

by

‘I don’t think you’ll like what I’m going to do with it,’ I felt obliged to add, as Jay’s face broke into a smile of relief.

The smile vanished. ‘All right, break it to me gently.’

‘No time.’ The sight of so many of Fenella’s people guarding the bridge had rattled me. What were they doing in there, that required so heavy a defence? The Society would be arriving any time now—they’d got royal permission to use the old troll roads; they’d be practically flying along—and they needed to be able to get straight in. I didn’t have time to negotiate with Jay.

By the time those two terse words left my lips, I was already at work. The gate was entirely defunct—no surprise there. I couldn’t tell what had functioned as the portal, long ago; probably a boulder or some other, like object, those were popular choices. Doubtless it had been cleared away when Farringale was sealed up. Nothing remained, then, for me to reawaken, and I had neither the time nor the knowledge necessary to create a fresh new gate here.

But we had encountered a similar problem recently, and I’d solved it. Inadvertently, yes, by way of an involuntary burst of magick I did not immediately know how to replicate. But if I’d done it once I could do it again.

I did as I had then, and sat down, putting the greater part of myself in direct contact with the ancient earth and its faded memory of magick. Not so difficult, really, to imagine myself a part of it; to lose myself in the peaceful sway of verdure, the soft and sharp smells of loam and sap; to join the dulcet notes of my lyre and my magick to those lacing the landscape around me. I heard, and felt, Jay shift beside me: an attempt to stop me, hastily suppressed. He would guess what I proposed to do, wouldn’t like it; would nonetheless accept, as I had, that the need was great and options few. I felt a stab of compunction as he settled again, and I turned my attention from him: how often had I cast him into torments of worry on my behalf? How often had I outraged his sense of caution, worn out his patience, ignored his fears—I’m sorry, Jay, I thought distantly, but I couldn’t say so, couldn’t even think about it right then, for I was shifting—bleeding into the landscape bit by bit—soon I was scarcely Ves any longer, naught left of me but a stray wisp of awareness, like a dream fraying away upon the wind.

***

It happened fast. Too fast. One minute she was Ves, seated at my feet, smiling apologetically at me with that damned lyre in her lap and magick wreathing round her like moths to a flame—and then she was gone, and there sat a Ves-sized rock, a craggy old boulder that looked for all the world as though it had been there since the dawn of time.

No ordinary boulder, of course. This one had motes of a purplish crystal laced through it, with flecks of silver—and, incidentally to its appearance, a profound magick about it, as old as Farringale itself (apparently) and very much functional.

‘A Fairy Stone,’ I sighed, and felt a stab of pain lance through my temples: a migraine on the approach. Perfect.

‘Okay,’ I said, and laid a hand against the cool, rough stone where Ves’s head had so recently been. ‘It’s okay. I’ll get you out of this—later.’

The incident with the chair, not to mention the tree, had proved all too clearly that the risks of Ves’s latest methods remained considerable. She could get herself into these messes; she needed me—us—to get her out of them again.

Later. She’d done this for good reason, and the next part was my task.

I called the number Milady—Mab—had recently given me, for just this purpose. She answered in seconds. ‘Jay?’

‘We’ve got a way in,’ I said without preamble. ‘She’s done it. I’m sending you co-ordinates.’

‘Thank you.’ Brief words, but a world of relief lay behind them.

‘Hurry,’ I said. ‘And avoid the main gate. It’s heavily guarded. Don’t let them see you.’

Nothing to do, then, but wait: and worry. About the progress of Ancestria Magicka’s plans, inside Farringale where they were, for the moment, unopposed. About my colleagues at the Society, about to face a unique challenge we may or may not be truly prepared for.

Most of all, about Ves, inert at my feet, so bound up in her myriad magicks that she might not, this time, ever get out of them again.

Not the most tranquil hour of my life.

Time moved agonisingly slowly, but Milady, thankfully, didn’t. I heard sounds of approach, and tensed, alert, heart pounding—ready to defend Ves and Farringale both to the limits of my ability—but it was Rob, striding over the heath towards me looking grim as death, and around him some twelve or fifteen of our colleagues. He’d trained every one of them, I knew: they were the best of us at the direct arts. By any other name, fighting. The advance force. Of course they’d be going in first.

Rob nodded at me, and looked around, nonplussed. Expecting to see either Ves or something that obviously looked like a gate, if not both.

I indicated the Fairy Stone, and Rob stared at it, frowning. ‘Ves hasn’t gone in alone, has she? She’s extremely competent but it’s far too dangerous—’

‘That’s Ves,’ I said. ‘She’s the gate.’

Rob was silent a moment, and then said: ‘You seem to be taking it well.’

‘It does seem that way, doesn’t it?’ I answered tightly.

He gave me another terse nod, this one tinged with sympathy. ‘We’ll be quick.’

And then he was gone, one hand planted firmly atop the stone-that-was-Ves, once. Magick surged as the members of his unit went in after him, one after another in a steady stream. By the time they were through, another group were arriving, and streaming into Farringale; faces blurred together as they went by me, too many to note, and I wondered whether it hurt Ves, whether she was even aware. She was strong, but she’d only done this sort of thing for a few of us before; now for fifty, seventy, a hundred…

Milady was among the last to arrive. Rob was her general, leading the charge: she was the shepherd, keeping everyone together, watching the rear.

She had Miranda with her, which was interesting. Miranda looked pale, tense and resolute. I wondered whether Milady kept her close out of trust, or its opposite, and perhaps she was wondering the same thing.

‘Thank you,’ Milady said again, to me, just before she went through. ‘Dear Ves. I hope she has not overreached herself.’

So strange, still, to look Milady in the face—and such a face; not young, not old, not human—more distinct by its lack, of anything I could call familiar.

Queen Mab indeed; I could have cast myself at her feet, and gladly. ‘She has,’ I answered. ‘She always does. I hope you won’t need the gate again, because I’m getting her out of there.’

Milady nodded. ‘Follow when you can,’ she said. ‘I’ll have need of you both.’

A grace period for Ves, then, albeit a small one. Good. Had I been ordered to haul her straight into the fray, I wouldn’t have been obeying it.

Milady awaited no response. In an instant she was gone, Miranda with her, leaving me alone with the inert lump of stone that was my maddening, alarming, adored and magnificent Ves.

I crouched down by her, set a careful hand to her lichen-covered surface, and spoke low and soothingly. She would be suffering, right about now. ‘I’m going through. And then we’re done. Okay? Just a couple more minutes and we’ll get you out of there.’

No response, of course: I wasn’t expecting any, though a faint hope withered and died. One last surge of magick, and magick took me, whirled me away: I entered Farringale Dell.

I looked around, oblivious to the landscape, to the knots of Society agents still in the process of disbursing. My only thought was for Ves: specifically, the appalling and impossible absence of her.

The Fairy Stone was not here.

How was that possible? Surely it could only function as a gate because it spanned the gap between the outer world, and the Dell: like a door, or a bridge. It had to be here—she had to be here—but it wasn’t. She wasn’t.

And because the stone wasn’t there—the gate wasn’t there—I couldn’t go back through and find her, either.

She was stuck, lost, and I’d lost her.

***

It occurred to me, distantly and belatedly, that we really ought to have warned Baroness Tremayne before we returned in force.

Not that the thought caused me much alarm. It’s difficult to feel distress, as a rock. There’s a stolid placidity to stone that one cannot help but absorb, even when one is only mostly a rock.

I had forgotten her altogether—Jay, too—everything, really, beyond the perimeter of my own boulder. A peaceful interlude, altogether. But a voice intruded upon my dreaming serenity, an insistent voice that vibrated through the core of me, demanding attention.

Cordelia Vesper, it said, over and over again, and I remembered that was my name.

Yes? I answered, cautiously.

Is that you?

Was I Cordelia? Distantly, I thought so. Ves, I answered. I’m Ves. I think.

Palpable relief; the voice made some wordless sound, a swiftly expelled breath. A sigh. Thank goodness. I had thought—there are so many of you.

I focused, gradually, and remembered. Many of us. Yes. Milady, and the Society, in force. It’s all right. Those are Mab’s troops. They’re here to help.

I should have said “we”, I suppose, for I, too, was there to be useful. Hopefully. But stone feels no sense of either agency or urgency, and mine were all gone somewhere. I drowsed in a lake of my own magick, lulled and sun-warmed; in seconds, I’d forgotten the baroness again.

Cordelia Vesper, came the voice again, with the insistent note of one who has repeated the same phrase several times, and failed to win a response.

I gave myself a strong mental shake. Yes! Sorry. I’m Ves.

We have established that.

Right.

Think you to remain a Fairy Stone all your days?

I thought about that, a bit. Not so terrible a prospect, honestly: quite peaceful. No? I ventured.

Your duty is fulfilled, methinks. None now linger about you, save one, at a remove.

One lingered. One! Jay must be the one.

At a remove? What does that mean?

She did not answer me, precisely, only said: Is it your wish to follow in Mab’s train?

Yes, I said, thinking of Jay more than Mab. I hesitated, struck at last by my predicament: I was a Fairy Stone, and my body seemed to think it had always been a Fairy Stone.

The same problem I’d encountered at Silvessen, not to mention the chair incident. And the tree. How easily my body and mind resigned their customary state, and adopted another’s; how difficult it was, afterwards, to think my way back into me.

Ophelia might have some idea as to why, but I didn’t. I’m stuck, I admitted. I needed Jay, or Zareen, or somebody, to pull me out of it again. And Jay was there—at a remove.

Excruciating pain, suddenly: my thoughts dissolved into agony. I felt uprooted, as though grabbed by the hair, and pulled.

And I burst out of the stone, the land, the magick, like a weed wrenched out of a vegetable patch—and woke up, screaming, to find Jay’s terrified face looming above me.

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 11

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Jay and I were not to go with the main force. Ours was the role of scout: we were to whisk away on the Winds and get back to Farringale well ahead of Milady and the rest of the Society. We left Rob (apparently in field command) organising our colleagues into teams—or, one may as well say, units—and hurried back down into the cellar.

Indira emerged from the crowd as we pushed and apologised our way back to the cellar stairs. ‘Here,’ she said, thrusting something into my hands; I caught it reflexively, felt rather than saw what it was. Smooth, jellyish spheres, cool to the touch: Orlando’s spellware.

‘Restoratives?’ I asked in hope.

She nodded once. ‘And sleep pearls. Don’t eat the red ones.’ With which words of wisdom, she vanished into the crowd.

I checked the contents of my palms: I had several red ones, and four green ones. I gave two of each to Jay, and pocketed the rest of the spheres in separate pockets: red ones left, green ones right.

Well, one green one; one of them went straight into my mouth. I blessed Indira’s forethought as it dissolved on my tongue, tasting of peaches. They’re fast-acting: within a minute or two, a lot of my fatigue had receded, and that delicious fizz of energy began racing through my veins. I was bouncing on my toes as we ran down to the henge, bursting with vigour.

‘If only it were possible to feel like this all the time,’ I mused, as Jay’s Winds of the Ways began to swirl through the room.

‘Exhausting prospect,’ Jay disagreed, absently. ‘You’d never sleep again.’

‘I’d never need to.’ Jay hadn’t taken his yet, that I had seen. I hoped he wasn’t going to pull a manly manoeuvre, and stubbornly go without. He had to be at least as fatigued as I was, after several trips through the Ways.

There followed a period of scrambling hurry, Jay too tense and focused for conversation. I chose not to distract him, for fear he might fly us into the side of a building, or smear us, pancake-like, up and down the unforgiving face of a cliff.

Once we emerged near Winchester, it was my turn: my job, to get us over the several miles to Farringale as fast as possible. Addie bore both of us proudly, and shot like an arrow through the balmy skies of southern England. The nearer we got, the greater my sense of urgency; all thoughts of Mandridore faded, and of Mab, replaced by a growing disquiet.

We’d been absent from Farringale for too much of the day. The sun remained high, but the afternoon was wearing away, and what had become of the griffins while we’d been mobilising? What of the rest of the city? For there must be some ultimate purpose behind the raiding of the library, and the subduing of the griffins—not to mention the theft and installation of at least one of Orlando’s regulators. What if we were too late? We had—I had—given away our presence, earlier. They knew their activities there were no longer a secret. If I were Fenella, I’d have accelerated my timeline to warp speed, and got out as fast as possible—before, for example, the Society and the Troll Court could form a devastating alliance (aided by several other magickal communities), and descend upon them in force.

We might arrive to find the city empty, of griffins and anything else of value. Our enemies gone, absconded with innumerable priceless and irreplaceable articles of troll culture and heritage.

Were I to give voice to my real fear, though, it was nothing of the sort. Why bother with the regulators, if the goal was only to rob the city? Why subdue the griffins, and then—rather than taking them out of the city, as I’d have expected—leave them in situ? They would never kill them: griffins were far too valuable. But if they weren’t stealing them, what were they doing?

They’d arrived in force—as we were doing. Was that in order to empty the city as fast as possible? Was it merely a question of bringing as many hands as possible, the better to thieve at speed?

Or had they brought so much manpower to Farringale because they were taking over the city?

Such unhappy thoughts kept me silent with mounting worry through the ten-mile flight, conducted at a speed that might, ordinarily, have set my guts churning with exhilarated terror. As we drew near to the bridge, my reverie came to an abrupt end, and with it, my long silence.

The site was no longer deserted. Stationed either side of the bridge, right there in the open, and very obviously armed with Wands, stood a pair of giants, the largest I’d ever seen. Each had a small unit of mixed troops with them: humans side-by-side with, to my very great dismay, several trolls.

‘Crap,’ I uttered eloquently. ‘That’s not—good.’

‘That,’ said Jay, ‘is very bad indeed.’

I pulled Addie up, halting our flight. ‘They’re entrenched. That’s a hostile takeover going on down there.’

Jay nodded. He understood the implications: if they were guarding the gate, and so openly, then they were declaring control of the city. This was a shameless, blatant attempt to seize Farringale entirely, and all its contents.

My heart sank to see trolls down there, supporting a cause so flagrantly founded upon greed. But perhaps it wasn’t so surprising, after all. The romance of Farringale could seduce the hardest heart; and since, as far as I knew, the Court at Mandridore had not, until today, publicised their own intentions in the direction of their lost enclave, it mightn’t have been difficult for Fenella to sway these to her side.

‘What do we do?’ I asked Jay, momentarily stymied. Milady’s plan to surge through the gate en masse, and attempt a quick overthrow of Ancestria Magicka’s forces, had suffered a check already. If Fenella had stationed so many on this side of the gate, I was willing to bet many more waited on the other side.

True, our numbers were still superior; hers would be scattered across Farringale, enacting the various parts of her plan. But still. A pitched battle at the gate was not what anyone wanted.

‘We need another way in,’ Jay decided. ‘And fast.’

‘There is no other way in,’ I protested. ‘That’s why we’ve always faffed around with the keys.’

‘There must be. Or there must have been, at one time. It’s an entire city. They can’t have managed with only one way in.’

‘You’re right, but it’s been closed for centuries. Sealed. Those old ways must be long gone, and even if they aren’t, how do you propose to find—and unseal—one of them in the next couple of hours?’

‘You’ve got the lyre.’

I had. I was unlikely to forget it, for the thing sang ceaselessly at me at the back of my mind; an alluring, enchanting melody, hard to resist. I was mentally postponing the moment when I would, inevitably, have to take up the beautiful, dangerous instrument, and play it again. The last time I’d done so, the results had been—explosive. Especially for me.

‘What do you imagine me able to do with it?’ I asked, cautiously.

‘I don’t know. But you’ve got the lyre, and you’ve got all of Merlin’s magick. If anybody can find a way in, and fast, it’s going to be you.’

In other words: this problem was all mine.

I felt a surge of panic, and suppressed it. No time for that. Farringale needed me; the Society needed me. Think, Ves.

Jay, a warm weight at my back, squeezed my waist. ‘You can do this,’ he said, sensitive, apparently, to the intense pressure my mind was trying to buckle under.

Addie was beginning to tire: unicorns aren’t made to hover. I turned her, and bade her fly a slow circle around the environs of Farringale. ‘Can you ward us from sight?’ I asked Jay. ‘I don’t want that lot to spot us, yet.’

‘Done,’ said Jay, and fell silent. I felt a little surge of magick from him, a charm woven around Addie and her riders: if we were visible at all to those below, we’d appear as a large bird.

One problem solved. I let Addie and Jay take over our direction: my mind shifted to the problem of entry.

Jay, broadly, was right: there must have been another way in, once upon a time. Any fae settlement or enclave typically had two ways of entry and egress: one between the enclave and the outside world, and one communicating with the wider magickal dell in which it was situated.

The bridge over the river Alre belonged to the former category. What of the latter? Was there a way into Farringale Dell, besides going through Farringale itself?

I fished in my trusty satchel, and withdrew the glorious, glittering lyre. Time was, they’d never have simply handed the thing to me: far too dangerous. Its deep, wild powers were wont to overwhelm me. That they had done so now—my mother, anyway, apparently on Milady’s orders—disquieted me rather. Was it that I was powerful enough now to bear it? Or was the threat to Farringale so dire, and so important, that I was considered an acceptable sacrifice?

No. My mother might throw me under the proverbial bus, if it suited her, but Milady wouldn’t. I had to trust her judgement—and my own strength. I was, after all, much mightier than I used to be.

I took a breath, and did my best to dismiss such an unhelpful spiral of fear. The lyre, cool in my hands, greeted me with a ripple of its airy strings, and a soft swell of its distinctive Yllanfalen magick. At least one of us was pleased to be working together again.

It wasn’t hard to lose myself in it. I began to play, one of the plaintive airs I’d once acquired from Ygranyllon: the melody didn’t matter, it was merely a conduit for the magick.

The effects were neither so intense, nor so terrifying, as when I’d played the lyre in the town of Vale. There, I’d been on another world: a more deeply magickal world than ours. Here, there were no such currents to sweep me away. This was our own plain, stolid Britain, a magickal backwater, and the threads of latent power I was able to perceive, even with the lyre, were meagre indeed.

I closed my eyes as I sank into the spells I was weaving; when I opened them again, an altered landscape lay spread before me. I saw, through Merlin’s eyes, a blanket of rolling green, dotted with knots of trees, and the clustered rooftops of towns. Laced through this verdure ran rivulets of ancient magick, latent and weak, half smothered by technology and time, but they held; oh, they held.

And there, away towards the Farringale gate: a savage pull of deep power, like the undertow of the ocean. Farringale lay tucked between the spaces in this landscape, on the other side of its fortified gate; but a city so ancient, so magick-drowned, could not help but exert its influence.

‘That way,’ I murmured to Addie, and it seemed to me that my voice echoed, throbbing with profound magick—painfully so. The currents shook me to my bones, and on some deep, frightening level I wanted to hurl myself into it—merge with it—drown in that sea of power. I would emerge—changed. Something other.

I gritted my teeth, and focused afresh on Farringale. On the dell I sought, and the way through. My mind skittered across that landscape of leylines, testing, probing, touching—there. There, a concentrated knot of magick, a thousand layers deep. An ancient cluster of charms, dormant now, shuttered like a window against the sun: but they had opened something, once, had presided over the passage of a thousand long-dead souls.

A gate—or what had once been a gate. It would be so again.

‘I’ve got it,’ I said.

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 10

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The meeting didn’t close so much as peter out, dissolving into ragged knots of people promising aid and plotting tactics.

Jay and I were called on to describe the situation in Farringale, and to express the Society’s intentions regarding its resolution. Once done, our part was largely finished. Alban excused us, and escorted us out.

‘Our regards to Milady,’ he told us outside the great meeting hall, evidently about to zip off somewhere.

‘You mean Mab,’ I said, spurred by some spirit of mischief.

An odd look crossed his handsome face: the sort that spoke of indecision. To dissemble, or not to dissemble?

‘You knew, didn’t you?’ I accused. ‘The Court’s known forever, probably.’

‘I did know about Milady’s identity,’ he admitted. ‘I was asked to keep it to myself.’

I fumed a bit, though silently. I could hardly blame Alban for keeping his sworn word, and it wasn’t his fault that Milady had never decided to trust us with the knowledge.

‘She had her reasons,’ he said, gently enough.

I sighed. Of course she did, and if I could put aside my own feelings for a moment, I could take a guess at hers. Knowing some part of the truth about Milady changed things, there was no question about that. I’d known her – sort of – for over a decade, and yet, now that I knew her to be Queen Mab, my impression of her was markedly different. She hadn’t ceased to be the solid, wise, reliable chief of our odd little organisation, exactly; she was still that. But she was something much larger, too.

And I hadn’t known. Hadn’t even guessed.

‘Everything’s changed so much lately,’ I said, a little plaintively. ‘I can’t keep up.’

‘Things have changed,’ he agreed. ‘But some things haven’t, and won’t.’ He winked at me, kissed my cheek and left, with a nod to Jay.

‘Which things aren’t changing?’ I asked Jay.

He took my hand, and squeezed it. ‘Most of the things that matter. A few of the things that do, but we’ll manage.’

‘I like that “we”,’ I offered, and leaned on him for a moment.

‘I’ll be here,’ he said. ‘That isn’t changing. Come on. Let’s go talk to Queen Mab.’

***

The atmosphere at Home proved unusually tense. Jay and I whisked our way back to the henge in the cellar, and stepped smartly up the stairs. We were suffering a fair degree of weariness at that point, after a long day of events; but our dreams (or mine, anyway) of a quiet moment with a cup of chocolate were instantly dashed.

I’d no sooner stepped off the stairs than several people dashed by, almost mowing me down as I emerged. One of them was Melissa, offering a distracted greeting as she bombed past, clearly on a mission. Halfway down the passage towards the kitchens—if I couldn’t have a peaceful hour in the first-floor common room, I could at least bother Magnus for a snack—I ran into Zareen, or the other way about.

‘Ves! Where’ve you been,’ she proclaimed, snagging me by the arm as she passed, and dragging me along with her. ‘Everything’s gone mad. We’re being mobilised. You’d think there was a war on, or something. If anybody knows what it’s all about, it’d be you. Is it true that Farringale’s under siege? They’re saying Milady’s some kind of fairy queen? I’m telling you, it’s mental.’

Preoccupied with doing my best to keep up with Zareen’s frantic pace, I managed no more than a few, vaguely assenting syllables.

They were enough. Zareen stopped dead. ‘No. It’s all true?’

‘More or less,’ I said. ‘I mean, Farringale isn’t exactly under siege, but it’s certainly under a kind of attack. And Milady—’

‘Queen Mab,’ Zareen interrupted. ‘That’s what they’re saying, but surely not, that’d be crazy.’

‘It’s true.’ I looked around for Jay, hoping for backup, but he was nowhere in sight. ‘You remember Baroness Tremayne?’ I caught her up on recent events as we walked—half ran, really—and wondered, idly, where she was taking me. I was too tired to care overmuch. Milady would want me soon enough, and until then, I might as well go along with Zareen.

I did wish Jay hadn’t vanished, though.

‘That explains a few things,’ Zareen said, when I’d finished. ‘Miranda’s holding some kind of council of war in the convention room. Everyone who’s ever so much as looked at a magickal beast is in there with her. And Rob’s got half the rest mobilising to mount what he’s calling “a firm defence” but it sounds more like it’s going to be the bluntly aggressive kind. Ornelle’s handing out Wands like she’s running a sweet shop, though I don’t suppose you need any of that sort of thing now—’

‘And where are we going?’ I managed to interject, slightly out of breath after two flights of stairs.

‘Indira said—’ Zareen began, but as she spoke a great bell sounded out of nowhere, tolling three times. It had the deep, sonorous roar of those massive cathedral bells, and it seemed to be coming from everywhere all at once. Zareen and I both stopped dead, and clapped our hands over our ears—not that it did us much good. The tolling vibrated right through to my bones.

In the wake of the third strike of the bell, Milady’s voice rolled and echoed through the corridors of the House. ‘My dear Society. We find ourselves in a state of emergency, as you are no doubt all aware. I call upon each and every one of you to answer the call of Mandridore, and of Farringale. Those willing to participate in a mission of great urgency and likely danger shall assemble in the great hall immediately.’

‘Right.’ Zareen changed course, heading for the hall, and I dashed after her. We were going—going now, right now, there would be no more time to prepare. So great was the confusion of my thoughts that I scarcely blinked when my mother appeared around a corner, heading our way, and fell into step beside me.

‘Cordelia. Good. Here.’ She thrust something at me, which I absently took. Only when my fingers closed around the cool, smooth metal of the thing, and felt its latent buzz of magick, did I understand. She’d brought the moonsilver lyre, the lyre of Ygranyllon, her kingdom. Milady must have requested it: one of those moments of prescience she seemed to have, a hunch that we’d need it.

‘Mum?’ I said, fuzzily. The lyre was singing to me already, all the deep magick woven into its ancient frame calling to all the magick woven into mine. ‘What are you doing here?’

She looked at me like I was a complete idiot, and perhaps I was at that moment. ‘I’ve brought that,’ she replied, indicating the lyre I was clutching.

‘Yes, but—you’re the—you could have sent someone else?’

‘Could’ve,’ she allowed. ‘But I’m going with you.’

‘Oh.’ Several more questions blossomed in my mind in response—my mother didn’t often volunteer herself to clean up other people’s messes; what in the world was she doing involving herself with this one?—but I didn’t have chance to ask them. We were arriving at the hall, which was bristling with far too many people, and more were arriving every moment. I caught a glimpse of Jay’s face, and Indira’s, and felt reassured.

The double doors were open, affording me a glimpse of the green and blue spring day beyond. Several large vehicles waited outside, waiting to convey our forces south.

Our forces. It hadn’t seemed real, listening to Zareen babble about mass mobilisation of the entire Society. But now I was here, in the thick of it, it felt terribly real. At last, after considerable and varied forms of provocation, Milady had declared a kind of war on Ancestria Magicka. For the crime of looting the priceless heritage of Farringale, they were going to pay.

Milady’s voice rolled over the assembled crowd, loud enough to drown out the tense, excited chatter. ‘Quiet, please,’ she said, sternly, and the noise died instantly. ‘For those unaware: Ancestria Magicka, an organisation with which we have long endured an uneasy relationship, has violated the sovereign borders of the city of Farringale and committed several acts of theft and vandalism against it. This is unacceptable.

‘The Troll Court of Mandridore has begged our aid in securing the city, and expelling the intruders. You will all have received instructions: follow them. We are not coming home until Farringale is restored to peace and sovereignty.’

‘We?’ I ventured, and heard the question echoed around me by several other voices.

‘We,’ repeated Milady, ringingly, and then added, in a softer tone: ‘I am coming with you.’

‘I must have misheard,’ I said to Zareen. ‘She can’t have said—’

‘She did.’ Zareen pointed. ‘She’s here.’

I couldn’t see what she meant, at first: only a wall of people crowded near the doors, Jay among them. But a space was clearing there, people drawing back, away from something I couldn’t see.

No. Away from someone. I don’t know if Milady arranged it herself, or someone else did, but a shaft of golden light beamed down from somewhere above, illuminating the diminutive—very diminutive—form of a person I’d never seen before.

She stood a foot tall, if that. In fact, she hovered, for at her back fluttered a pair of gossamer wings, a blur of pale colour and light. Her hair was a white cloud about her face; that face both aged and ageless, for she was not, could never have been human.

That, at least, did not surprise me. I had long imagined her as, possibly, troll; the hints of her connections with the Troll Courts, and with Farringale, had been plentiful. But this, I could never have guessed.

Understanding dawned, like a brick to the face. ‘Giddy gods,’ I breathed. ‘She’s Mab.’ Not Mab in the same way that I was Merlin—a modern avatar of an ancient power. She was older, far older, than I could ever have suspected, for she was Mab herself, the Mab of legend and of myth.

She’d spoken, once, of feelings which had sent her into the heart of our House for comfort, as I had done: I myself once spent two days complete in this very room, quite alone. She had been offered her current role, she’d said, and did not know whether to accept.

I, full of my own concerns, had assumed she had meant a role like mine: a role like Merlin. That she was an archetype, like me, and the Baroness Tremayne. But she’d never confirmed that.

She had been speaking of her role as Milady. As the Society’s leader. Her other role—Mab—was no role at all: just her.

‘Giddy gods,’ I managed, near prostrated with awe. No wonder she had so many connections—so much rare knowledge—so many secrets. ‘Zar. Am I dreaming?’

‘We all are,’ she answered. ‘We’ve been dreaming her dream for years. We’re a part of it.’

Milady, with effortless stage presence, held her pose long enough for the rising chatter to peak, and die away again. Then she said, with a soft smile on her ageless face: ‘Are we ready, then? Shall we go?’

We were; we went. Our rag-tag band of scholars, scientists, inventors, librarians, and magicians, led by mythical Mab, filed en masse out of the safe world of our beloved Home, and off to something horribly like war.