by Hylldirion looked at me oddly, but Jay snickered. I’d got around the problem of how to store my own valuables by way of misdirection. Instead of having a safe, or a big, fancy chest with a big, inviting lock on it — anything obvious that begged to be investigated by a chancer of a thief — I had a cracked old chamber pot. No one would ever think to look in there for something worth stealing.
‘Never mind,’ I told the Lorekeeper.
Course, if you know the magickal password — so to speak — my shabby old chamber pot miraculously turns back into its true shape: a crystal chest full of goodies.
So if I could protect my valuables by disguising them as a repellent article of no interest to anyone, the alchemists of the past could certainly have protected their own valuable findings by disguising them as inanities — or the ramblings of a madwoman.
My thoughts flew to Cicily Werewode’s journal, and Mary Werewode’s moonbathing.
‘Do you have reason to think that’s what was going on?’ I looked hard at our new friend the Lorekeeper, who seemed to be enjoying our ignorance far more than I liked.
‘What, exactly?’ said Hylldirion mildly.
I took a breath. ‘That the alchemists of the past, the ones with enough magickal ability to interest us, were using some kind of code to record their findings.’
‘It is plausible, is it not?’ said the Lorekeeper.
‘More so than that nothing has survived at all.’
‘Indeed.’
‘So, then,’ said Jay, leaning forward. ‘Was there a universal code, understood among most alchemists, or did each one develop their own?’
‘Both,’ said Hylldirion. ‘Some terms were commonly used. Among regular or non-magickal alchemists, such terms as fool’s gold, horn silver, dragon’s blood and pearl ash — you will likely have heard some of them, even today. The focus of magickal alchemy, of course, was jewels more than metals; some sought to create such articles as sun’s glow, which seems to have referred either to sunstone or to diamonds, or blush of love, which meant rubies.’
So far, so familiar. I’d learned from my own research that many magicians or witches who practiced alchemy sought to create jewels, though not just any jewels: the magick-wreathed kind from which prized Wands are made. Why do you think I got in so much trouble for losing the Sunstone Wand? (and I did). Those things are not plentiful.
As far as I knew, they’d failed as surely as the likes of Flamel failed at making gold out of lead.
‘Some of them, of course, likely had their own terms between smaller groups of researchers,’ said Hylldirion. ‘On which point, I cannot assist you further. Alchemy was never my area of expertise.’ Or interest, his tone implied.
Well, few people had ever taken much interest in so batty an art. That was the whole problem.
‘Lorekeeper,’ I said. ‘Is it your opinion that anybody has ever succeeded in producing or creating magickal silver? By transmutation, or something else?’
‘I would be very surprised,’ he said, without hesitation.
I wanted to ask why, but Jay intervened with a question of his own. ‘What is magickal silver?’ he said. ‘Is it literally silver, or not?’
That was a good question, one I had briefly explored but been unable to answer. Our library, at least, had little to offer on the subject. The stuff had, perhaps, never been prevalent enough, at least in our Britain, to merit much study. Or perhaps its potential had never really been understood.
‘It is not silver,’ said the Lorekeeper. ‘In terms of its physical make-up it has little in common with real silver. It is only silver-coloured. What is it made from? How is it formed? These questions I cannot answer. I do not know that anybody can. The alchemists of old termed it a distillation of the elements of air and water, which may go some way towards explaining the names the Yllanfalen have historically used. That, of course, is a discredited notion these days.’
Yes, the world has moved on from the idea that the four elements have much to do with anything, even in magick. But that didn’t necessarily mean there was not a kernel of truth lurking somewhere in there.
I filed the idea away.
‘Regarding jewels,’ I offered. ‘I understand the ones we value to be identical in composition to any other, only they are said to form in areas of great magickal intensity, and thus absorb a degree of it before they are extracted. This seems to be a widely accepted explanation. But if magickal silver is not silver, then I suppose the same can’t be true.’
Hylldirion spread his hands. ‘Perhaps not. Perhaps yes, and some aspect of that process of absorption has a transformative effect on the base metal. Who can say? Without extensive study, we must rely on speculation, and such studies have never been conducted.’
I sighed, beginning to feel dejected. Here in the heart of Yllanfalen power, I had hoped to uncover some genuine insights; they, after all, were the one people I knew to have incorporated their moonsilver quite deeply into their culture. But it seemed the Queen’s Lorekeeper knew little more than we did.
Still, the clue about the code was of use. I’d send that snippet of information to Val at my earliest opportunity, and see what she made of it.
A scroll drifted past Hylldirion’s head, wandered off to the far side of the library, and then came back again.
‘Thank you,’ said the Lorekeeper, accepting and unfurling it. A slender thing when rolled up, it went on and on and on when unrolled, comprising far more parchment than seemed possible. I watched in dumbfounded silence as Hylldirion browsed through several reams of it.
‘Werewode, was it not?’ he murmured, without looking up.
‘Mary Werewode, in the late thirteen hundreds,’ I confirmed. ‘And Cicily Werewode, who married, at my guess, somewhere in the fifteen-eighties.’
‘There would not be a marriage record,’ said Hylldirion. ‘Because there would not be a marriage, or certainly not a sanctioned one. Not at that time. If your Mary or Cicily were born of a union between one of my people and one of yours, it would have been an illicit one.’
I felt disappointment again. ‘So you will have no way of knowing?’
‘Well.’ Hylldirion paused in his perusal of the scroll. ‘If there was a birth, and presumably there must have been, that might have been a matter of record. And here we are.’ He laid the paper, very carefully, over the surface of his desk.
Jay and I leaned over it.
In tiny, crabbed scrawl I read: Margaret Werewode, and the date 1538.
Cicily’s mother? It had to be. The timing was perfect.
‘So Mary was probably human but Cicily only partially so,’ I said, excitement rising again. ‘I knew it!’
‘What is that scroll?’ said Jay, in a tone that made me look quickly at him. He was unreadable, but I saw a certain tension in him.
The Lorekeeper said calmly: ‘It is a register of all children born to Yllanfalen and human pairings.’
I stared at the endless scroll, aghast. ‘But it goes on forever.’
‘The records date back rather more than a thousand years.’
‘Oh! A mere nothing.’
Jay did not speak. Looking at him again, I could guess at his thoughts, even if they did not show on his face. Somewhere on that scroll, his father’s name must be written — and, presumably, the name of his Yllanfalen grandfather.
Would he ask? I waited, giving him time to decide.
He said nothing.
The name of Cicily’s grandfather was there: Igryr of Everynden. ‘What is Everynden?’ I asked, pointing at the entry.
‘It is one of the towns of Aylligranir.’
I nodded, thinking. So Cicily was part Yllanfalen; was that why she had taken such an interest in her great-great-grandmother’s work? Had she inherited the Yllanfalen fascination with magickal silver?
That did not altogether follow, by itself. I began to wonder how much she had known her grandfather, this Igryr of Everynden — and whether he had shown her anything. Given her anything.
Something precious and rare, for the granddaughter he should not have had. An heirloom. A silvery one.
It wasn’t so far-fetched. Magickal silver had never been plentiful, but five hundred years ago it had been somewhat more so than it was today. A Curiosity or a small Artefact made from magickal silver, given into her care by her mysterious and magickal ancestor? That would kick off a strong interest in the substance, no doubt; especially if she could also connect it with her great-grandmother’s journals.
Who would have it now?
If anyone, the Elvyngs.
‘One last question,’ I said to Hylldirion. ‘You haven’t got any famous magickal alchemists in your kingdom’s history, by any chance?’
‘I should think it highly improbable that anybody would have thought it worth their while to bother,’ said the Lorekeeper.
That response rather took me aback. ‘Why do you think that?’
‘Because…’ The Lorekeeper looked thoughtfully at me, then at Jay, apparently struggling with a decision of some kind. ‘There would have been no need,’ he said finally. ‘There are several instances of powerful artefacts wrought from moonsilver holding a high place in the culture of some one or other of the Yllanfalen kingdoms, and that is not a coincidence. Our culture has historically prized the silver most highly, for its beauty and its properties. And we were able to do so because we had what was once a significant source. The Moonsilver Mines were once the property of all of the Yllanfalen monarchs, until they ran dry of silver in the late fourteenth century. They have been of little interest to anyone, since.’
Something about his demeanour tipped me off: there was more.
‘Just where were those mines?’ said Jay, glancing at me.
Hylldirion smiled. ‘Everynden.’
