by It took us ten minutes to trudge our way through to a road, by the end of which time I had mud up to my knees and I couldn’t feel my toes. ‘Isn’t it meant to be summer?’ I groused, trying in vain to shake the cold, sludgy grime out of my sandals.
Jay made no answer. He glanced up and down the road, which was a beautiful construct of white stone. The tree-cover having thinned somewhat, it shone silver under the moon. ‘I think this way,’ he said, picking a direction at what looked to me like random.
Being Jay, though, he was perfectly right. Soon enough, the walls of a town appeared on the horizon, with clustered houses behind it. Built from the same white stone as the road, the town looked a creation of pure magick, like it had coalesced out of moonlight itself, and would vanish with the rising of the sun.
Hell, this was fairyland. For all I knew, that’s exactly what it was.
‘Hoping that’s Everynden,’ I said.
‘The maps showed no other towns in the vicinity of that henge,’ said Jay. ‘Though being two hundred years out of date, who knows.’
‘And the mines are where in relation to the town?’
‘Somewhere around here,’ said Jay, and fell over.
I ran to his side. ‘Jay! Curse it, we should have something sensible out here, like lights.’
No answer. I searched the darkened ground for his prone form, and found nothing but empty air.
‘Jay?’
He hadn’t fallen over. He had disappeared.
‘Jay!’ I yelled. ‘This is a bad habit of yours!’
‘Sorry,’ he said from behind me, and I leapt a foot or so in the air.
‘And to think I used to like the night-time,’ I said plaintively. ‘Where did you go?’
All I could see of him was a tall, shadowed figure with threads of moonlight in his hair — and a glowing nugget of argent in the hand he held up. ‘Remember Torvaston’s tower?’
‘It was only the other week.’
‘And how the snuffbox worked?’
‘Like a passport to his majesty’s bedchamber.’
‘I don’t know if that’s a passive property of this argent stuff, or only a popular use for it, but thanks to this burny nugget of argent I appear to have found the mines.’ He held out a hand, which I tentatively took.
One step, two, and… three steps. Four. It took five or six before I realised we’d travelled from the grasslands outside Everynden into somewhere else. An underground somewhere, if the sudden, crisp chill in the air and the dampness against my bare arms was anything to go by.
‘I wonder if her queenship knew it would do that,’ I said.
‘Conspiracy theory says yes,’ said Jay.
‘Top marks!’
Down below, even the moonlight failed us. We were entombed in the kind of utter darkness that blind, screaming panics are made of, and I engaged in a touch of unseemly haste as I summoned a little light-wisp to save us. White radiance flared. I sent the wisp floating high, and took a moment to collect myself as I looked around.
If you’ve ever visited natural cave formations, you’ll have some idea of what we saw. It wasn’t one of those vast, echoing kinds, the sort it would take half an hour to cross. Just a little one, with walls of mottled stone smoothed by endless years and the soft trickle of running water seeping in from somewhere above.
Here and there, deep holes had been hacked into the stone. Whatever had been removed from these jagged channels had left the faintest, silvery gleam behind, and my heart leapt.
‘Look,’ I said, trotting over to the nearest of these, and gingerly laying my hand against that silver tracery. It didn’t burn me, not the way the pure argent had, but I felt a sharp thrumming, as of lingering potential. Memory? Magick? The argent may be gone, but it had left something of itself behind. Something Mary Werewode had learned to capitalise upon.
Jay began a circuit of the cave, the soft sounds of his footsteps drifting back to me. ‘I don’t see any new argent, er, growing, or whatever it does,’ he reported.
‘This can’t be the entire mine, though,’ I answered. ‘Surely just a small part of it? And what about the moonlight?’
‘I see I have guests,’ said a new voice, and I once again jumped half out of my skin.
I whirled about, but saw no one. ‘Who’s there?’
‘Can you not guess?’ It was a woman’s voice, pitched a little low, and perfectly composed. My eyes narrowed. I’d heard it before, and recently too.
‘Ms. Elvyng?’ I ventured.
She laughed, and came at last into view, traversing some hidden bend in the tunnels we had yet to discover. ‘Sharp,’ she said, smiling at me. ‘Somehow I knew the two of you would be troublesome.’
I looked around for Jay, and found him drawing nearer to me. Unease prickled, and I despised the gut-dropping sense of uncertainty that briefly robbed me of all the sharp wits she had just praised. This we had not anticipated. What would she do? Was the argent a secret worth killing for?
She stopped a few feet before us, amusement still curving her lips and brightening her eyes. ‘You look white,’ she said to me. ‘And braced for combat,’ she added, looking then at Jay. ‘Come now, you can hardly imagine I would harm you, and I hope you won’t be so rude as to offer violence to me. The Society has better manners, no?’
‘We are trespassing,’ I pointed out.
‘Yes, and I’d be inclined to escort you out. Only I cannot imagine how you could possibly have contrived to enter here without the queen’s permission.’
‘She didn’t precisely give permission,’ I admitted. ‘But that’s because she didn’t tell us about this place. She did give us a… clue, however.’
Jay held up the nugget of argent. ‘Which, as it turns out, was also an entry ticket.’
Crystobel Elvyng nodded. ‘You know, the Society has a reputation for persistence. Wit. Expertise. To a degree frequently decried as highly inconvenient, and I find I now understand what they mean. It isn’t precisely ideal that you’ve nosed your way into this particular secret.’
‘We have good reason,’ I said quickly.
‘Which is what, exactly? I am afraid this partnership is not open to new members at this time.’
‘Partnership?’
‘The Yllanfalen own the mines. We own the secret of dredging new argent from within them. It is an arrangement which suits us both.’
‘We have zero designs on your secrets.’ It cost me to say that, for this was a secret I badly wanted to be let into. Who wouldn’t? But the goal was not the process; it was the product we wanted.
‘Just on the argent,’ I added.
Crystobel Elvyng raised one elegant brow. ‘I don’t precisely follow.’
‘If you have a supply of raw argent, we’re buying,’ Jay said.
‘Well,’ I amended. ‘Most probably the Court at Mandridore will do most of the buying.’
Crystobel Elvyng looked from me to Jay and back again, no longer amused. A frown of mild puzzlement creased her brow. I noticed she wore heavy, protective gloves, and a collection of stoppered glass vials hung from a belt around her waist. She’d been working down here? ‘Why don’t you tell me exactly what it is you’re trying to do?’
A little later, we sat at our ease in an adjacent chamber, surrounded by glimmering chunks of the mysterious argent we’d spent so many weeks searching for. A break in the otherwise uninterrupted stone of the cavernous ceiling permitted a few stray beams of moonlight to filter down, and in the channel below, pale moonsilver formed in the rock walls.
I sat upon a low, smooth stone, Jay beside me, watching as Crystobel went through a range of incomprehensible motions involving the contents of those same vials. ‘To be truthful,’ she was saying. ‘I don’t precisely know how or why it works. None of us do, at this distance of time, for Mary stopped speaking to us long ago. I only know a certain range of motions that must be gone through, and conditions that must be maintained, in order to keep this process going. These,’ she said, looking severely at me, ‘we will not be sharing.’
‘That’s fine,’ I said, though it wasn’t. My scholar’s heart, ever avaricious for secrets, ached for more information, and I knew Val would be spitting chips. ‘But can you supply the project?’
‘I can make no concrete promises. As you may be able to tell, the argent does not form quickly, nor in great quantities.’
‘I don’t know that we need masses of it,’ I said. ‘That’s a question for Orlando.’
She didn’t ask who Orlando was. Doubtless she knew him by reputation already. ‘When I came to see you,’ she said, glancing briefly at us, ‘I had expected the Society would be open with me about its reasons for pursuing information about Cicily — and, as I suspected, my argent.’
‘Fair,’ I allowed.
‘It’s a sensitive project,’ said Jay, when I said nothing else. ‘We, um, haven’t always known who we can trust with the full details.’
‘There are those who would gladly co-opt the whole thing for their own gain,’ I added, thinking very much of Fenella Beaumont as I spoke. She’d said as much, last time we had seen her. Ancestria Magicka will be the ones to restore magick to Britain.
‘And you thought we might be just such a type?’ said Crystobel.
‘No. But we didn’t know that you were not. And you know, we were hoping the most prominent magickal family in England might not be keeping the most important secret in magick all to themselves.’
She inclined her head, and stoppered the last of her vials. I’d strained my eyes trying to get a glimpse of their contents, but besides vague impressions of colour and an occasional glimmer of magick, I’d discerned nothing of use. ‘I suppose my behaviour has been similarly suspicious towards you,’ she allowed. ‘Or I might have attempted a negotiation before. As it was, I could have no better idea of your motives than you had of mine.’
‘The Society could be a collection of soulless, money-grubbing thieves,’ I agreed.
‘Some might say that it is,’ said Jay.
True. Some might, indeed.
‘But you say not?’ said Crystobel.
‘Emphatically not. We’re the good guys.’
Crystobel gave a small smile. ‘Well, then,’ said she, stripping off her gloves. ‘I believe I will have two conditions.’
I straightened, sensing a challenge. Conditions. That boded either excitingly or appallingly, depending on what kind of a woman Crystobel Elvyng really was. ‘Oh?’
‘It is impossible to do otherwise than support this particular of the Society’s aims, and as such my family will supply your argentine needs — within reason — free of cost. If the following conditions are met.’
Free? I sat up even straighter. That either meant Crystobel was a woman of extraordinary generosity — in which case, I felt even guiltier for distrusting her so much before — or, she had one hell of a set of conditions for us.
‘One,’ she said. ‘The Society will not publicise any part of this process. Indeed, I prefer that the world at large continues in utter ignorance that it even exists.’
An obvious enough request, and not too unreasonable. It would be better if such a secret wasn’t left in the hands of a single family; that was hardly fair. But it wasn’t our business to interfere in a private pact between the Elvyngs and the Yllanfalen. Besides, if (when?) we succeeded with our goal, these traces of argent would no longer be half so necessary. There’d be more than magick enough in Britain, for everything good and marvellous anyone might wish to do.
‘Two,’ she went on. ‘I want Merlin’s grimoire.’
‘What?’ I blurted.
She just looked at me.
‘Merlin,’ I repeated. ‘Merlin’s grimoire.’
‘A reasonable trade, I think?’
‘But,’ I said, and stopped, my brain reeling. ‘But—’
‘There never was a Merlin,’ said Jay. ‘And therefore, there can be no Merlin’s grimoire.’
‘That is a debatable point.’
Jay and I, mutually thunderstruck, stared at Crystobel.
Jay recovered first. ‘It’s an impossible task.’
‘Can’t we just pay for the argent?’ I pleaded. Even if it cost half the earth — which it would — that would be a more achievable price to pay than an impossible artefact.
‘Money I can get,’ said Crystobel. ‘I do not especially need more.’
I got a grip. ‘You must realise how crazy this sounds,’ I said, and I wondered at myself, for was I not usually the one enthusiastically promoting the craziest of ideas? ‘If you can offer us some proof that this artefact exists—’
‘I know it exists,’ said Crystobel calmly. ‘My family used to own it.’
‘Um,’ I said.
‘Used to?’ prompted Jay.
‘It was stolen from us. Four years ago. The police were never able to recover it.’ She smiled when I opened my mouth to speak, and added, ‘Yes, I can offer proof. There is a purchase receipt, my father’s property, listing its acquisition at a private auction. I also possess some photographs of the piece, and copies of one or two pages, plus an official valuation of the book for insurance purposes.’
I’d run out of objections that ran along the lines of but that’s impossible. ‘Merlin,’ I croaked. ‘Cannot be.’
Crystobel shrugged one shoulder. ‘Truthfully, I am less concerned with the precise identity of the book’s author than I am with the contents. Whether or not it was penned by the real Merlin, or merely someone using the name, it is priceless and irreplaceable. Its contents are responsible for many of the magicks and wonders upon which our family depends, and I must have it back.’
‘We aren’t detectives,’ said Jay bluntly. ‘If the police couldn’t get it back for you, why do you imagine we can?’
‘Are you not?’ was all Crystobel said. The pointed look she cast around the cave illustrated her thinking clearly enough: official detectives we might not be, but we had demonstrated a talent for digging up secrets. Even ancient ones.
I admit to feeling a flicker of excitement begin to unfurl. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I give you fair warning. If we find this grimoire, we are going to read it.’
‘There’s no stopping her,’ Jay agreed. ‘I know. I’ve tried.’
Crystobel grinned. ‘If you get me my book back, you’re welcome to read it. And I’ll give you all the argent you need.’
That settled it. I love her.
