by It really wasn’t plain, at least not to my eye. I stared and stared at Jay, and saw the same features as ever. The same human features. They were good, no doubt about that: finely etched, sculpted cheekbones, strong jaw, all the hallmarks of what might be considered solid good looks.
But he was human. Not a hint of a fae glamour about him; none of the unusual tints or beautiful, slightly alien cast to the features that might mark him as part fae. None of the things that had stood out so clearly in Cicily Werewode’s portrait.
But the Lorekeeper disagreed. ‘You haven’t the eyes,’ he said to me, not unkindly. ‘It’s clear enough to me. And to Her Majesty, no doubt.’
‘Jay?’ I squeaked.
He flashed me a tight, unamused smile. ‘Can we talk about it later?’
I folded my arms, and stared him down. No, later wasn’t going to be good enough. I’d brought a part-Yllanfalen associate into the middle of an Yllanfalen kingdom, and I had no idea what the political ramifications of that were likely to be. Was he a descendant of someone from Aylligranir? If so, the connection might not precisely please the people here. Was he descended from a scion of a rival kingdom, with whom relations were strained? That could be even worse.
Either way, we’d put ourselves in a difficult position. Rudeness didn’t begin to cover it; and what if the queen had seen it as an attempt to manipulate or influence her?
Jay needed to tell me stuff like this. Yes, it was personal, but the strictly personal could sometimes have a serious impact upon the professional. And like it or not, I was at present responsible for him.
He rubbed at the back of his neck, not looking at me. He was deeply embarrassed by it, and I wasn’t sure why. For all my annoyance, there was nothing actually shameful about his ancestry, and in his case it had clearly benefited him. He’d inherited some part of the legendary Yllanfalen talent for magick-wreathed music.
‘My grandmother,’ he said shortly. ‘Had an — unsanctioned relationship with one of the Yllanfalen. My father was the result.’
He said no more.
That would’ve been around the 1950s, I thought, or thereabouts. “Unsanctioned” could mean a lot of things, but all of them bad; had it caused a family scandal? Was that why Jay was ashamed of it?
‘Do you know who it was?’ I said.
He shook his head.
That explained why Jay’s mother might have hoped he’d be admitted to music school, though not why he’d been denied. Apparently blood links to the Yllanfalen didn’t necessarily count for much with them, either.
I felt a little bad for putting Jay on the spot like that, and offered him an apologetic smile. It was inconvenient — from a professional point of view — that the family didn’t know who his ancestor was; it meant I had no means with which to navigate the tricky political waters. Then again, it meant the Yllanfalen might not know, either, which eliminated most of the problems I’d been worried about.
‘It may be possible to find out,’ said Hylldirion, watching Jay. ‘Would you like to know?’
‘No,’ said Jay shortly, and added, ‘Thank you.’
Time to change the subject.
‘Anyway,’ I said breezily. ‘We came to consult you on two primary points, Lorekeeper, if we may.’
Hylldirion sat down again, wheezing softly. He waved a hand, gesturing us to take chairs at will. ‘I hope you have brought me an intriguing problem,’ he remarked. ‘It is a long time since I had a really new idea to dig into.’
That boded well. ‘One of them is a mere question of ancestry,’ I admitted. ‘There was an alchemist in the fourteenth century who may, I suspect, have had Yllanfalen blood herself. I don’t know how far back your records go?’
‘An alchemist?’ he said, and his gaze sharpened upon me. ‘What was the name?’
‘Mary Werewode. Alternatively her own descendant, Cicily Werewode, about a century and a half later.’
‘Werewode.’ Hylldirion nodded to himself, and went on nodding. I didn’t see what he did, but a fine golden quill pen whisked into the air and sailed off; after a moment I realised it had been caught up and carried away by someone I couldn’t see. A sprite, most likely. ‘Kindle will find out, if records there are.’
I made a mental note to beware of invisible sprites hovering about. We perhaps ought to have been a bit more discreet with some of the things we’d said about the queen.
Oops.
‘Thank you,’ I said hastily. ‘And the other thing was about alchemy itself. Specifically…’ I thought. Specifically what? Specifically, a quick and convenient answer to the complex question of how to produce the most valuable magickal substance known to man or fae? An easy, straightforward recipe for the kind of stuff some people would kill for, just lying on a shelf in the Lorekeeper’s library? Hah.
No.
‘We, um, wondered if your people might ever have investigated some of the old alchemical pursuits,’ I said cautiously.
Hylldirion’s eyes twinkled. ‘Lead into gold, and the elixir of immortality?’
‘No. Real alchemy. Magickal alchemy. In particular…’
‘Magickal silver,’ said Jay, growing impatient with my waffling. ‘Moonsilver, as you call it. Or skysilver.’
Hylldirion considered us both in silence, for a moment or two. ‘And what leads you to believe that such a thing was ever possible?’ he asked. ‘Surely all who remember the moonsilver know that it was pulled from the ground, like any other metal.’
‘Not quite any other metal,’ I said. ‘Some are now formed by amalgamation, of course.’
‘And you think that might be a way to make moonsilver?’ said the Lorekeeper. ‘Mix silver with — something, and there it is?’
‘No,’ I snapped. ‘Were it so simple, the world would be awash with the stuff. I have no idea how it might be contrived; I only know that some one or two ancient scholars heavily implied that they had done it.’
‘Including these Werewodes you spoke of,’ said the Lorekeeper.
‘Yes. Possibly.’
Hylldirion sat with steepled fingers, his expression unreadable. ‘I can see why the search has led you here.’
Was that a glimmer of contempt in his eyes? I bridled at the mere possibility.
‘We are not asking for the sake of personal gain,’ I said. ‘We aren’t treasure hunters, if that is what you imagine. We’re from the Society, and we’re trying to save magick. Moonsilver has the distinction of being peculiarly adept at absorbing magickal energy, and under the right conditions also amplifying it. As such, it is of great interest just now; both to the Society, and to Their Majesties of the Court at Mandridore.’
I hate name-dropping, but sometimes it’s necessary. And if there is one fae court that all the others take seriously, it’s Mandridore. Pomp, power and influence.
Hylldirion did not respond directly to anything I’d said. He was silent for a while longer, while his lively mind turned over who-knows-what ideas. Then he said: ‘I do not know what your sources might be, but one would do well to ask why the art has fallen so far out of favour — indeed, been all but forgotten altogether. If there is any validity to any of those old spells, why are they no longer practiced? Why are they not respected?’
‘We had asked ourselves those same questions,’ I allowed.
‘And what conclusions did you reach?’
‘Either that there is no validity to any of it, in which case we are destined for a great disappointment. Or that they were unusually adept at maintaining a strict secrecy.’
‘Why might they have worked so hard to maintain such a secrecy, do you think?’
I shrugged. ‘Most likely because alchemy has never been held in very high regard, and no serious scholar likes to be laughed at for their choice of subject.’
But Hylldirion shook his head. ‘No area of endeavour that can prove its worth ever remains a laughing-stock for long. If alchemy has anything to offer, why was it kept secret? Why is it still?’
‘Because,’ said Jay, ‘keeping it secret was more important than giving it to the world. Which means something that was done with it was — too effective.’
‘It may simply be that the alchemists of old were avaricious in the extreme,’ said the Lorekeeper, nodding and relaxing back into his chair. ‘After all, of what use would it be to turn lead into gold, if everyone could do it? Soon enough, gold would be as common as lead, and therefore as valueless, and the whole procedure rendered worthless.’
‘That could well apply to moonsilver,’ I said.
Hylldirion nodded. ‘It may also be that the procedure proved dangerous in some way, too much so to be worth it. Or that it was too difficult, or too expensive — yes, even if the product was moonsilver. It is a substance of great, but not infinite value.’
These objections I privately waved away. Danger we would risk, for the sake of so important a project, and no expense could possibly be spared considering the importance of the ultimate goal.
‘We consider ourselves duly warned,’ I said, with a slight smile.
Hylldirion smiled back. ‘It was my duty.’
‘We understand.’
‘We return, then, to the question of how so important a secret might have been kept for so long, even at the expense of attracting ridicule. Supposing such a secret exists.’
I couldn’t tell if he knew something, and was being cagey for effect, or whether this, too, was an attempt to warn us of impending disappointment.
Lorekeepers. They’re as addicted to mysteries as I am.
‘If there are books on the subject,’ I said, ‘they’ve never been found. At least, not to my knowledge.’
‘They might be hidden in some deep, dark pit somewhere,’ Hylldirion agreed. ‘An unusually impenetrable one, that somehow no one has got into in hundreds of years. That is a possibility.’
My thoughts flew to Farringale. Would it be worth another trip back, to scour the library for such a book? Could it be possible? It could take weeks on end to search all the books on all those shelves. Even with Mauf’s help, I couldn’t see it taking much less time. And what if there was nothing there? Weeks of subjection to the dangerously unstable magickal overflows of the place, and maybe nothing to show for it.
Not exactly Plan A material.
‘Alternatively?’ continued the Lorekeeper.
He’d asked a question. I had no idea what he was driving at. ‘Um,’ I said. ‘Perhaps nothing was written down?’
Jay, though, was shaking his head. ‘Scholars of every academic discipline write things down. They have to; nobody could remember the half of complex spells or lengthy research without written records, and then it could never be passed on.’
‘Perhaps they didn’t want to pass it on. Isn’t that the point?’
‘Not widely, perhaps,’ Jay said. ‘But to the select few? Nobody wants to feel that their life’s work will die when they do. They wrote down whatever they had, I’d bet a year’s salary on it.’
‘I am inclined to agree,’ said the Lorekeeper. He watched us with both faint amusement and a kind of eagerness, like a dedicated teacher painstakingly guiding a pair of befuddled students towards enlightenment.
He couldn’t just tell us whatever he knew?
Lorekeepers.
‘What possibilities remain?’ he prompted.
‘It was written down,’ said Jay, ‘but in such a way as to be incomprehensible to the majority.’
I gasped. ‘Hidden in plain sight! Like my chamber pot.’
