Author: Charlotte E. English

We found Wyr furiously waving my Sunstone Wand around: poking the door with its tip, trying to slot it into those twin keyholes I’d noticed, drawing invisible symbols over the stone surface, and occasionally shaking it in irritation. We watched this display in silence for a few seconds, with (at least on my part) great enjoyment.

‘Hi!’ I said after a moment.

Wyr jumped, and spun around. ‘Damnit,’ he growled. ‘You can’t have these back.’ He stood braced, as though he would withstand our combined attack by force of will alone.

‘All right,’ I said mildly. For the moment at least, I did not seem to need them.

I tested this by flicking my fingers over my hair. Its pink hue did not fade, but it was joined by six or seven other shades, until I had a shimmering rainbow mane.

I gave this a casual toss, while I thought about what precisely to do to Wyr.

‘Ves,’ murmured Jay. ‘I hate to be a downer, but I don’t think a change of hair colour is going to help much here.’

‘I’d think you would know better by now,’ I said.

It took him a second to realise that I hadn’t retrieved my colour-changing ring from Wyr’s possession. It still adorned our unwilling comrade’s thumb.

I caught the sideways glance he threw at me then, the narrowing of the eyes. 

By then I had decided. ‘This is nothing personal,’ I said to Wyr. ‘Or, not very much. But you’re in the way.’

‘Wait—’ said Wyr, as I stretched out my hand.

Too late. An instant later, a small tree grew where Wyr had been standing. It only rose as high as my waist, but its slim branches were laden with the cherry-scented apples we had seen back down in the valley below.

‘Hrm,’ I said, frowning at it. ‘I was going for pancakes.’

‘You…’ Jay said, before words apparently failed him. ‘You’ve turned him into a tree.’

‘It could at least have been a pancake tree,’ I said, sadly. ‘I need some practice.’

Jay took a big step back from me, holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Not on me!’

‘No, that would be silly,’ I agreed.

‘That would be silly?’ Jay yelped.

‘Never underestimate a woman with rainbow hair,’ murmured Alban.

‘Noted,’ said Jay.

I noticed something else. The smell of fresh cherries emanating from the Wyr-tree was creating a sensation I hadn’t experienced since Vale: hunger.

I was hungry again!

And… and tired. Tired like a woman who had sat in a magick-warping chair all night while her companions slumbered around her, too wired to close her eyes.

Damnit. Poor timing.

‘Anyway,’ said Miranda. ‘How long will he stay like that?’

I looked down at my handiwork. ‘I have no idea.’

‘Perhaps we’d better get on, then?’

‘Right.’ I held up my right hand, in which I wielded the double-pronged implement of (hopefully) opening, and intoned, ‘Fork.’ I turned to test my theory as to where it went.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Alban. Perhaps you’d better do this part.’ I handed him the fork.

Alban, troll-tall and able, therefore, to reach the keyhole, carefully inserted the fork-key into the twin holes. It slotted in easily, a perfect fit.

I waited, holding my breath, for the sounds of a lock clicking back, or hinges creaking as the door opened for us.

All I heard was Pup’s whimper as she pawed at the Wyr-tree. I pretended not to notice when she squatted and, er, watered the base of its trunk.

‘It doesn’t turn or something?’ I said to Alban.

He shook his head, and demonstrated its absolute immobility. ‘It fits in there, but… that’s all.’

I looked at Emellana. ‘Any ideas?’

She considered the question in what I hoped was a promising silence, then said, ‘No.’

I sighed. ‘Anybody?’

‘There were three things in that case,’ Jay pointed out. ‘Perhaps there’s more to this than a weird key.’

I took out the watch. Being of troll craftsmanship, it was a lot bigger than most of the examples I had seen, and heavy. ‘No tarnish,’ I murmured, running my thumb over the gleaming, silvery metal. ‘Has anyone cleaned this?’

‘I don’t know for certain,’ said Alban. ‘It hasn’t been under my care.’

It had no glass, the mechanical parts instead protected by an ornately-patterned silver case. I opened it, and beheld a clock face made from something resembling ivory. I hoped it wasn’t unicorn horn, but based on everything we had seen at Vale, I did not hold out much hope there. No numerals were etched into that circular face; instead, intervals were marked with tiny bubbles of coloured jewels embedded into the ivory/unicorn horn/whatever it was.

I counted. Nine, not twelve.

Also, a new detail I had failed to note before: it did not have two hands. It had three. One, perhaps, had been concealed behind another, the last time I had taken a brief glance at it. Now, all three were splayed out around the face, and none of them appeared to be moving.

‘Not a clock,’ I said, passing it to Emellana.

Jay was deep in study of the snuff box, with (slightly to my surprise) Miranda leaning over his shoulder. ‘There’s nothing in it?’ she was saying.

Jay opened the lid to display its emptiness. ‘It really looks like a snuff box, but—’ he lifted it to his nose, and inhaled. ‘It doesn’t smell like it’s ever held anything like snuff.’

‘It’s old,’ Miranda pointed out. ‘If it’s been empty for a long time, there might not be any lingering smell.’

‘Maybe,’ Jay agreed. ‘But snuff’s pungent stuff, especially the flavoured blends. It does linger.’

‘So you think it wasn’t used to hold snuff?’

‘I can’t think of a reason why Torvaston would keep something so mundane in so important a scroll-case, alongside the key to this door,’ said Jay. ‘Can you?’

‘No. So, what was it supposed to hold?’

‘No clue.’

‘Alban,’ I said, sidling his way. ‘There wasn’t anything in the papers that might give us a hint?’

He shook his head. ‘Torvaston never mentioned any of this.’

‘He wouldn’t, I suppose,’ I said, remembering. ‘The papers date from before the fall of Farringale, right?’

‘Right.’

I sighed, disappointed. And stymied. The watch (or whatever it was) might be pretty, and intriguing, but to look at it was to receive no indication whatsoever of its function, and an empty box could be of no use at all.

‘Ves,’ said Emellana.

I looked up. ‘Tell me you have something.’

She had walked away to the very edge of the plateau, and now walked back, holding the watch out in front of her. ‘Walk with me.’

I obeyed, Alban falling in beside me. We paced from one side of the plateau to the other, eyes fixed upon the jewelled clock-face.

Almost imperceptibly, one of the three silver hands moved.

‘I think,’ said Emellana, ‘that maybe it is not a watch, but more some kind of a… compass.’

‘With three hands?’ said Alban.

‘Whatever it is attracted to is perhaps complicated.’

‘Doubtless,’ I said, excitement rising. ‘Em, you might have cracked it!’

Emellana returned to the stone-slab of a lift, and stepped onto it. ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ she said.

Ten minutes later, we made another discovery.

Following Em’s lead, we wandered through the sunlit valley, watching breathlessly as one or another of the three hands slowly moved around the compass’s face. It wasn’t just the hands that were affected by movement, either; while it was difficult to detect in the bright light of the morning, the jewels around the rim brightened and dimmed with a faint magickal glow. They were collected broadly into three colours, too: blue and gems formed a row of three, followed by shades of green, and finally three purplish jewels. They tended to react in concert.

‘Pick a colour,’ I said after several minutes of tramping aimlessly about. ‘Look. When the shortest hand moves, the blue ones shine. The green ones seem to respond to the middle hand, and the purple ones to the longest.’

‘Purple,’ said Em, and adjusted her direction. Instead of walking in circles, we walked until the longest of the three silver hands edged around the face, and kept to that direction. The compass led us back into the orchard of tangled trees, some distance from the mountain — which had, a glance back revealed, faded once again into the white mist.

Nothing emerged from the trees, nothing met my eyes that might explain why the compass had brought us tramping in this direction, and we were only getting farther from the door. My excitement began to ebb. What if neither the compass nor the box had anything to do with opening the way? Were we wasting time?

Emellana stopped, in between two withered old orchard trees. In the shadow cast by their arching boughs, the soft glow of the purple jewels appeared stronger.

Or maybe they shone brighter because we were onto something. The long hand had stopped in the dead centre of those three purplish gems, and as we watched, the glow grew brighter and deeper.

‘Em,’ I said in awe. ‘You’re purple.’

She glanced down at her amethyst-coloured shirt. ‘I know.’

‘No. I mean… you’re glowing.’ A swirl of something misty billowed up around Emellana, shimmering and purple, and soared into the sky.

I watched in silence as a trio of butterflies drifted into the whirl of light and hovered there, softly aglow.

‘What happens if you step out?’ said Jay.

Emellana took three big steps away, and the mist and lights promptly died away.

Alban took the compass from her. ‘And back?’ he said.

When Emellana returned to her former spot, the glow returned. What’s more, it was definitely coming from her. Even her skin glimmered with that weird purple light.

‘It seems I am stuck here,’ she said, ruefully.

‘We’ll find the other two,’ I said. ‘And giddy gods, I hope this doesn’t only work for trolls, or we’re a team member short.’

Alban eyed the compass in his hands, and gave a tiny sigh. ‘I perceive it is my fate to become a magickal beacon.’

‘Only for a little while,’ I promised, hoping I spoke the truth. ‘Pick a colour.’

‘Blue.’

‘Be quick,’ Em said. ‘It is my belief that these points move around.’

‘Why would they—’ I began, and shut up. ‘Of course. Why would there need to be a compass, if the beacon-points were fixed?’

‘Precisely.’

We left Emellana standing in her whorl of magick, and followed the compass once more, moving rather faster than before. Blue turned out to live a few hundred feet away, in an open spot in the meadow. Alban lit up like a sapphire-coloured firework — not quite so explosively, thank goodness — and stood there, arms folded, as butterflies settled in his hair. ‘Okay. And who’s taking green?’

‘It will have to be you or me,’ Jay said to Miranda. ‘Whatever’s going on with Ves I don’t know, but she seems to be the best person to head inside first.’

Was that a compliment, or was I being fed to the wolves? ‘It could be dangerous,’ I said to Jay, glowering.

‘And you’ve just turned a person into a tree.’

‘… good point.’

‘You’ll have one of us with you, too.’

I pick you, I thought, but did not say aloud.

Miranda, though, is not stupid. ‘Fine,’ she sighed, and held out her hand for the compass.

Alban gave it over. ‘It tickles,’ he informed her gravely.

‘The light?’

Alban nodded once.

‘Lucky that I’m not ticklish,’ she said, marching off. ‘Oh no wait, I am.’

I looked back once, in the direction we’d left Emellana. I could still see her flurry of purple mist and light, flowing into the skies. By now it was thick with butterflies and, doubtless, other wingy things.

I disliked having to leave three-fifths of my team behind in keeping the things activated, but if it had to be that way, then so be it.

I hoped, at least, that it would successfully open the door.

‘Right,’ said Miranda shortly afterwards, installed atop the half-rotten stump of a fallen tree, and lit up with verdant green. ‘Please get on with it, before I drown in insects.’

A quick glance, to check. There was Em’s beacon, still aglow, and Alban’s column of blue. Miranda’s gathered quickly in radiance, until it hurt to look at her.

‘We’ll be—’ I said.

‘Ves.’ Jay hit my arm, and pointed.

‘What— giddy gods.’ The mountain was back. We were nowhere near it, but whatever enchantment had hidden it from a distance was visibly evaporating into nothing. The mountain loomed over the valley, glittering with snow and magick and — gods, the griffins. They were whirling up there, hundreds of them, and a whirl of coloured light — familiar colours, these, purple and green and blue — engulfed the whole lot.

I could just see the gigantic door as it… vanished. Indeed, half the rock-face disappeared.

‘It’s not a mountain,’ I breathed. ‘It’s a tower.’

I tore through the unnatural mountain valley on the trail of Wyr, my Pup, and the long-sealed door to Torvaston’s settlement. Whether the gods had answered my hasty prayers and granted me a burst of speed, or whether my magickally supercharged state put wings to my feet, I began to gain on Wyr despite his head start. He charged headlong through the verdant grasses like a fox with a pack of hounds on his tail; that, I supposed, made me the hounds. I could be sorely tempted to tear him apart with my teeth, too, once I caught him — if Pup didn’t beat me to it. I didn’t think she had too many violent tendencies, but one never knew. Wyr could rouse the bloodthirsty instincts of a block of stone.

It occurred to me, as I pelted along, to wonder where Wyr thought he was going. His flight seemed aimless; around us and ahead of us stretched the same, unbroken grassy landscape, dotted with the same patches of purple heather, the same wizened old trees. No apparent destination rose upon the horizon, nowhere for a fleeing thief to take refuge. Nowhere for a legendary door to lie hidden, either.

I was forgetting the unusual behaviour of mountains, in Enclaves associated with that ancient troll court. Between one step and the next, the mists cleared from the skies; looming with shocking suddenness out of the ether rose a peak the equal of its majestic twin at old Farringale.

Complete with its own complement of griffin residents. Enormous nests were dotted here and there up the rocky face of the mountain — apparently unscaleable, considering its absolutely sheer sides — and in the far distance, I glimpsed a few familiar, dark, winged shapes wheeling upon the winds.

I felt a moment’s strong satisfaction. Hadn’t we said there would be griffins here? The pleasure of having a theory confirmed never gets old, however many times one is proved deliciously, perfectly correct.

But that was to grow distracted from the point, because I was still hurtling towards a sheer rock face at improbable speed, and so were Wyr and my absurd, furiously yapping pup. Something about the shape and structure of that peak struck me as odd; too structured, too symmetrical, too sheer. Not altogether natural.

I didn’t have time to study it any more closely. Ahead of me, Wyr skidded to a stop at the base of the peak, and stared — hopelessly? — up at the unclimbable expanse of rock before him.

‘Wyr!’ I yelled. ‘Giddy gods, where is the damned door.’

He did not look back. I forced air into my burning lungs and energy into my flagging legs, and put on a final burst of speed in a bid to catch up. Not that he had anywhere to go—

—I stopped dead as Wyr shot skywards, borne by a slab of levitating rock which had, to my eye, come out of nowhere. He’d stepped onto it deliberately, of course, though by what mechanism he’d caused the thing to bear him up the peak I couldn’t tell. Perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps it did that by itself.

Stranger things were happening out here.

Unfortunately, that was the very same moment that Pup caught up with him. Fastening her sharp little teeth into his leg with a yip of victory, she, too, was borne haplessly upwards, attached to his trouser-leg.

‘Pup!’ I wailed.

Wyr’s involuntary cry of pain was my only consolation.

I paused a moment in frozen dismay. Wyr had out-jockeyed us again, and this time we’d lost poor Pup to his wiles as well.

I shook myself. Get a grip, Ves. If there was one unusually buoyant slab of stone attached to this peculiar peak, there could well be more.

Alban, Jay and the others found me there some minutes later, urgently questing for a second magickal elevator and coming up with nothing.

‘Was that a scrap of yellow fur I saw hurtling up the peak a minute ago?’ panted Jay, coming to a stop near me.

‘A scrap of bitey, yappy yellow fur, which has yet to come down,’ I replied. ‘Help me.’

‘With?’

‘Wyr, the Pup and presumably the door are somewhere up there, and we are not.’ I’d walked back and forth and around and back and forth and around and found nothing useful, and was rapidly growing desperate. We were so close.

‘He’s not that far up, Ves,’ said Miranda, and I belatedly remembered the lirrabird she’d sent up to keep an eye on Wyr. She pointed upwards. ‘Maybe fifty, sixty feet?’

I stared up in the direction of her pointing finger, without much effect. Thick, swirling mist obscured my view.

Right.

There comes a time in every adventure when you have to check in with yourself and find out how crazy you’re feeling.

Is it important enough?

Yes.

Are you brave enough?

Hell, yes.

‘Forget it,’ I said, calling off the pointless search. ‘Just find me a slab of stone. Couple of feet wide, not too heavy.’

Alban and Jay gave me identical, doubting looks. ‘You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking?’ Jay said.

‘Ves, I know you’re fond of Goodie but let’s not be completely insane,’ said Alban.

I shot both of them a look that said, Have we met before? ‘The stone?’ I said.

It was Emellana who found it: a neatish disk of stone, a few inches thick and just wide enough for me to fit both feet onto it. ‘You rock,’ I informed her, taking it. ‘Again. Thank you.’

She gave me her faint, amused smile. ‘Be careful up there.’

I dropped the stone and stepped onto it, spared a futile wish that it hadn’t been necessary to sacrifice my Sunstone Wand, and delivered a bolt of pure magick to the hapless stone beneath my feet.

‘Ves, sixty feet up is pretty damned far,’ I heard Jay yell as I shot into the skies.

See, levitating isn’t usually my strong point. I’m lucky if I can manage more than a few feet.

But I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to get some use out of my inconveniently magick-drenched state. A feeling of dreamy serenity had been growing upon me ever since I had set foot in Torvaston’s enclave, that itchy, wrong feeling draining away entirely. I hoped that meant that my surroundings and I were nicely balanced, or something nearer to it. I hoped that meant that me and my overflowing magicks could do mad, wonderful things together.

I shoved everything I had at that slip of stone, and catapulted myself upwards at what felt like fifty miles an hour.

If a thin, idiotic shriek was heard to reverberate around that peak at that moment, I confess it was me.

Up sixty feet I went, and more. And more. Frantic, I tried to turn off that insane flow of magick. Like it has a tap or something, I thought disgustedly, succeeding only in slowing my pace. Nice one, Ves. At this rate I’d hit the top of the peak in no time, making of myself a tasty griffin-snack.

Or I’d just fall off the damned stone, and plummet to a grisly death below. Not in front of Alban, I thought absurdly, and a hysterical giggle tore itself from my throat. Holding myself steady on the stone was taking too much effort; the higher I went, the more powerful the winds that sought to knock me clean off my perch.

Right. Stop dithering. Gritting my teeth, I held grimly to position atop the stone, tried not to notice the way I’d begun to spin like a sodding top, and reversed the flow of magick. Instead of boosting me up, I wanted it pushing me down.

My headlong pace slowed, and slowed further. Heart hammering, I kept my eyes turned resolutely away from everything that rose above and — oh no, not below, don’t look down, you utter fool, could you be any more stupid—

The one good thing about being two hundred feet up (or more)? There’s no one up there to hear you scream.

Dignity intact.

Sort of.

But at last, to my weak-kneed relief, I ceased shooting up higher, and began to sink.

Carefully, I admonished myself. How about we don’t do this at a potentially fatal pace?

Down, down we went, and human magickal battery or no, it was the hardest thing I have ever done, no contest. Later, I’d look back on that scintillating three minutes of my life and wonder what in the giddy gods was wrong with me.

‘Batshit crazy, Ves,’ I said out loud as I swooped back down the peak. ‘You might want to work on that.’

There: a tuft of bright yellow, not far below. I squinted, and as I sank several more feet through the drifting white mists I detected a plateau upon the mountainside, atop which stood Wyr, and Pup. As I drew closer — flying my stone contraption like a pro by then, if I do say so myself — I saw something else, something that made my overcharged heart beat faster with excitement rather than terror.

An enormous stone door was set into the rock. Made from a single, huge, carved slab, it had the weathered look of great age. It was smooth and unmarked, which I thought was unfair. If this was the Lord of the Rings, there’d be a convenient runic inscription offering us the password.

‘Hi,’ I said as my stone plinth came to rest atop the plateau.

Wyr did a proper double-take, and stared at me in utter disbelief. Was there even a tinge of awe? ‘You cannot be serious,’ he said. ‘How?’

‘I’m temporarily possessed of godlike magickal powers,’ I said, with all the nonchalance I could muster. Never mind that my knees were shaking, my legs felt like jelly, and I had a strong desire to collapse all over the blessedly solid rock beneath my feet and cover it with kisses.

Instead, I scooped up my pup. She had abandoned her assault on Wyr’s leg by then, and sat cheerfully watching his total lack of progress with the door, a scrap of his trouser-leg still stuck in her teeth.

Wyr’s leg was bleeding, to my satisfaction. Petty, Ves, I chided myself, but it didn’t help.

‘Any luck?’ I said, rewarding lovely, bloodthirsty Goodie with a thorough cuddle.

He had my Sunstone Wand and my ring in one hand, and the scroll-case in the other. What he’d been trying to do with them that might have the power to open the door, I couldn’t say.

‘Not yet,’ he said, eyeing me warily.

Did he think I was going to try to retrieve them? I was tempted, but they were keeping him busy and that was more important just then.

Pup watched the Wand’s progress with greedy avarice.

I knew how she felt.

‘Be right back,’ I said, and stepped onto the slab of stone by which Wyr had travelled up to the door. As I’d hoped, the moment I rested my weight upon it, it began to move, and sailed smoothly back down.

I left Wyr gazing after me, nonplussed.

At ground level, I was greeted by four wide-eyed, possibly angry people. Or three such people, and Emellana.

‘Impressive,’ said she, unruffled as ever.

‘Thanks.’ I held out my fist for a bump, which she bestowed. ‘There’s a door up there with an oddly-shaped keyhole.’

Nobody answered me.

‘Alban?’ I prompted. ‘The fork? There are twin holes spaced about an inch apart, very small. The fork-thing should fit, I hope? I don’t know if that’s going to be enough by itself, or whether we’ll need the watch or something as well—’

‘I just had about eight heart attacks in quick succession,’ said Jay.

‘Me too,’ said Alban.

‘That makes three of us,’ I said, attempting a smile.

I received only a flat stare in response, from Jay at least. Alban, though undoubtedly appalled, also regarded me with something like… admiration.

‘Are you always this reckless?’ he said, doing something quizzical with his eyebrows.

‘Yes,’ said Miranda. ‘She’s famous for it.’

I gave her the look of utter betrayal, which she waved away. ‘Any other person would be thoroughly dead by now. Somehow, when it’s Ves, she… pulls it off.’

‘To say the least,’ said Alban, with a flash of that grin I loved.

Not the time to get distracted, Ves.

‘Can we talk about this later?’ I said. ‘We’ve a door to open and a thief to dispose of.’

Jay gave me a shocked look.

‘Er, not fatally,’ I clarified.

‘Right.’

‘Probably.’

Alban produced the not-fork, the possible-watch and the probably-snuff box from a pocket, and put them into my hands. I read a little reserve in his demeanour, and suffered a moment’s remorse. He’d truly thought I was about to die. So had Jay.

To be fair, I might have.

I hardened my heart. Needs must. Hasn’t that always been the way?

‘Thank you,’ I murmured.

He briefly squeezed my hand, and released it.

My heart eased a little.

‘Right,’ I said, stepping back onto the lift. ‘Pile on. We’re going up.’

Alban joined me, and Jay, and Em. There was just room enough for Miranda to join us, and the stone began to rise.

‘You know he’s going to mess us up first chance he gets?’ said Jay, eyeing Wyr sourly. The subject of his justifiable resentment was still in Emellana’s custody, engaged in some loud debate I had not bothered to listen to. But as I watched, Emellana released him — none too gently — and his gaze fastened instantly on Jay and I, obviously holding secret counsels without him.

‘I know,’ I murmured. ‘I’m counting on it.’

‘Wha—’ said Jay.

Slightly louder, I said: ‘I know, Jay, and you’re right to be concerned. Just don’t tell him about the Wand and the ring, all right? It’s best if he doesn’t know what was in that scroll-case.’

Jay, to his credit, only blinked once at me in confusion before his face cleared to impassiveness, and he nodded. His eyes shifted sideways to Wyr in a creditable display of craftiness.

Wyr gave no sign of having heard me. ‘Ready to go?’ he said, and I noticed he gave Baron Alban a wide berth as he passed.

‘Quickly, please.’

Miranda, to my surprise, spoke up. ‘One question, first. Whereabouts did you leave your new employers, Wyr?’

‘Lady Fenella? Truth be told, I haven’t seen her in a while.’

I thought I saw relief on Miranda’s face, before she turned away. No wonder. She’d defected to Fenella Beaumont’s miserable organisation, only to (hopefully) defect back; she wasn’t going to be popular with anybody, at this rate.

Course, one could rely on nothing Wyr said. Me, I counted on running into a few of our least favourite foes the moment we got anywhere near Torvaston’s Enclave.

Couldn’t be helped.

‘Tokens?’ said Wyr.

I’d noticed Alban stuffing handfuls of the things into his pockets soon after he had appeared, but those would doubtless be to whichever henges he’d yet to go in search of us. Not much use. ‘We will be travelling with Patel Windways,’ I said.

Wyr looked nonplussed.

‘That guy,’ I clarified, pointing at Jay.

‘You know that’s—’

‘Illegal,’ I said, interrupting him. ‘We know.’

‘You’ll be thieving in no time.’

I opened my mouth to object to this monstrously unfair charge, but had to close it again in silence. Not only had I given the sneak permission to plunder Torvaston’s Enclave at his leisure, I also proposed to divest the place of its most important and valuable artefact myself. We could argue semantics and historical-rights-of-ownership all day, and it would still all boil down to something uncomfortably close to theft.

Noticing he had successfully got under my skin, Wyr grinned at me. ‘Well, ladies and gents, we’re heading north,’ he said. ‘Far north.’

I wasted a moment in useless doubts. He was a back-stabbing little shit. Would even the promise of uncontested plunder of a lost king’s personal effects be enough to keep him in line? Was he taking us to the Hyndorin Mountains, or was he once again sweeping us away to somewhere else?

I shook the thoughts away. It was a gamble worth taking. The worst he could do was delay us (again); meanwhile, it could take us days or weeks to work out where to go without help.

‘Lead on,’ I said. ‘We’re right behind you.’

That he had indeed taken us far north seemed indubitable, a half-hour or so later. We exited the last of a sequence of henge-complexes, each decreasing in size, upon a windy peak somewhere bone-chillingly cold. Also distressingly short on oxygen.

Maybe this was the brilliant new plan. Drop us somewhere freezing and dangerously high up, and leave us to die of exposure.

No, he couldn’t do that. The way out was embedded into the rock, a circle of weathered, craggy stones swept clean by the wind. The landscape offered little else in the way of hope. We stood, miserably huddled, on a soaring mountainside, surrounded by nothing but more mountains. Bleak and beautiful, these peaks were of a deep, dark stone; snow dusted the tops of those on the near horizon, rising still higher into the mist-white skies. 

‘This way,’ said Wyr, and set off, winding his way in between two jutting crags. He had his hands in his pockets, probably to protect them from the cold, but he seemed untouched by the conditions. He sauntered off, whistling.

‘Your ring is gone,’ said Alban in my ear.

That cost me a pang. Yes, I had deliberately hung it out as bait for the double-crossing thief. No, I didn’t love losing it.

‘Then I guess I’m stuck with pink hair forever,’ I said.

‘Luckily, it suits you.’

I smiled up at him. ‘You can definitely stay.’

‘That was the plan.’

We set off after Wyr, me keeping a weather eye on the horizon for any unhappy surprises leaping out of the air. I trusted Jay to keep track of where we were going, in case we needed to find our way back to the henge. ‘You do have the mysterious miscellany somewhere about your person?’ I said softly to Alban.

‘You mean the other… articles? Yes, I do.’

‘Thank goodness.’

He grinned. ‘Your faith in me is touching.’

‘Actually I had no idea if you’d thought to bring them along.’

‘…that was a gamble?’

‘Yep.’

‘You’re a brave woman.’

‘Or stark raving mad. The point is the subject of some debate, at Home.’

‘Fair.’

‘I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before we left.’

‘Other things on your mind.’

True, but that was little excuse. I suppose the peculiar paraphernalia had seemed so random as to be hardly relevant, and I hadn’t set eyes on any of it since that last trip to Mandridore. I’d clean forgotten.

Fortunate that we had Alban to rectify that particular mistake.

Then again, if I had brought them with me, they would probably have disappeared into Wyr’s possession along with the scroll-case. Swings and roundabouts.

Wyr led us on a winding route, bearing steadily downwards towards a sloping valley below. We walked for the best part of half an hour, getting colder by the minute. By the time he finally stopped, my teeth were chattering. Even Alban looked uncomfortable.

‘And here,’ said Wyr, ‘is where we all part ways with the straight and narrow.’ He gestured at the ground, his hand tracing a vaguely circular shape in the air.

Without which clue, I might never have spotted the henge. It was so deeply embedded as to be virtually invisible, only the rough outlines of a ring of rock discernible. ‘More Ways?’ I said.

‘This one isn’t part of the official network, and you can’t buy tokens to use it.’

‘How did you know about it?’ said Jay. I saw his point. The stone circle was so well camouflaged, if I hadn’t known what I was looking for, I’d never have spotted it at all.

‘Old diaries, old stories, rumours and whispers and many, many weeks of searching,’ said Wyr. ‘None of which,’ he added with a twisted smile, ‘were conducted by me. I just bought the information.’

‘Nice when you can get away with that,’ said Jay sourly.

‘Extremely. Shall we go?’

Jay looked drawn and tired, and small wonder; we had worked him pretty hard even to get this far. But he was growing accustomed to the potency of the Ways out here, or so I assumed, for while he looked weary, he also looked composed. Sane. Not losing his marbles, as he had the first time he had travelled by henge complex.

Still, I felt a flicker of concern for him. ‘Are there many more?’ I asked of Wyr.

‘This is the last one.’

I looked questioningly at Jay, who nodded back. I’m fine, that meant.

Whether he was genuinely fine or just being a raging man about everything, who was to say? We didn’t have a lot of choice but to let him take us through.

‘I’m going first, with Ves and Alban,’ Jay announced.

Was he too tired to take all of us at once, or was this a precaution? I couldn’t read his expression. ‘Fine,’ I said, and stepped up to his side.

Alban joined us on Jay’s other side, and Jay began the process of summoning the Winds of the Ways. A swift breeze swept up, and blew back my hair. It smelled, oddly, of cherries.

‘Where does this one go to?’ I said to Wyr.

‘Into the Hyndorin Enclave.’

‘What? I thought you said it had been closed for centuries.’

‘Not the entire thing. Just the part that matters, that being wherever Torvaston and his friends settled.’

I wanted to ask more questions, specifically about what there was to expect in the mythical Hyndorin hideaway. But I was too late. In a whirl of Winds and a flurry of snowflakes — somehow — Jay swept us away.

And in that instant, Wyr made a lunge for us. I felt him fall heavily against my side — the side upon which my trusty satchel hung — and he clung to me as we travelled through the Ways.

When the whirl of motion ceased and the world stopped spinning around us, I opened my eyes to the sight of Wyr sprinting away from us.

Mellow sunlight glinted off the shape of my beloved Sunstone Wand, clutched tight in his hand.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘That got rid of him.’

Jay pressed my hand in brief sympathy. I suppose he knew what it cost me to turn those two treasures over to Wyr, and watch him abscond with them.

I reminded myself that retrieving them was not beyond the bounds of possibility, and that even if it was, they were well lost. This time, Wyr had played right into my hands, and I intended to capitalise on that.

‘We need to follow him,’ I said. ‘Quickly. He’s on his way to Torvaston’s doorstep, or my name isn’t Ves.’

‘Right.’ Jay gathered himself, and vanished.

‘Your name isn’t Ves,’ said Alban. ‘Technically.’

‘And you aren’t technically a baron.’

‘Touché.’

We had ended up somewhere I never could have expected. Considering everything — like the references to the Hyndorin Mountains, for one, and Torvaston’s hand-drawn map suggestive of rugged peaks — I had anticipated a properly mountainous landscape. Actually, we were in a green-and-golden valley, apparently in the height of summer. Tufts of feathery, heathery purple were dotted here and there, together with sufficient flowers to drown in. And while I am something of an enthusiast for flowers, I recognised exactly none of the species I saw around me.

Trees we had, too, the gnarly kind indicative of great age. Despite this, they were laden with blossom and swelling fruits — including something that smelled like cherries, even if they looked more like apples. That explained that aroma.

Meanwhile, despite the evidence of high summer going on all around us, the skies overhead were as misty-white as those above the peaks we’d just come through. And, most peculiarly of all, a light dusting of snow drifted steadily down from those skies, though it vanished or melted away before it could reach so much as a single blade of the grass upon the ground.

The flow of magick was significantly more potent. Not Vale levels, not yet. Chaotic enough to produce some odd and interesting effects, though. Strong enough to ease the skin-prickling discomfort and head-swimming disorientation I’d suffered ever since we had left the vicinity of Vale.

I liked it at once.

‘Strangest Enclave yet, by a mile,’ I said, keeping an eye on the direction Wyr had gone in. He was rapidly vanishing from sight. I wanted to hare madly after him, before he could disappear altogether into the mist.

But I also didn’t want to do this without Jay, and Em, and Miranda.

 ‘I’ve never even heard of—’ said Alban, holding out a hand to catch a bit of the uncanny snow.

But as he spoke, a gaggle of people exploded into the waiting henge: Jay, Em, and Miranda, with Pup struggling in Emellana’s arms.

‘Everyone okay?’ I said, looking especially at Jay.

Too out of breath to speak, he nonetheless managed a nod in answer to my question. I wished we had time to let him rest, but we didn’t.

‘Righto,’ I said. ‘Mir, can you send up your bird? We need to track Wyr.’

‘Done.’ Miranda gave a soft whistle, and something small shot up into the air in a blur of bright blue feathers.

I retrieved Pup from Emellana’s grip, and set her down. ‘Pup of mine,’ I said. ‘It’s your turn to save the day. Remember Wyr?’

Pup sat staring up at me, grinning and wagging her tufty yellow tail. A single snowflake settled on the tip of her stubby horn.

‘If you can catch him, you can bite him,’ I said, and pointed.

Pup gave a series of yaps, turned in a frenzied circle, and then tore off after Wyr.

‘And now we run,’ I said, praying for a burst of unnatural speed courtesy of my unnaturally magickal state.

Taking a deep, deep breath, I legged it after the Pup — and Wyr.

Following Alban’s several shocking disclosures, an appalled silence fell. I wrestled with a growing sense of panic, and more or less succeeded in stuffing it back down. Worst time in the history of magick to panic, Ves.

Jay shook himself. ‘Plan?’ he said. ‘We need a plan.’

‘I suppose the plan’s unchanged,’ I said, watching Wyr with narrowed eyes. Something about him didn’t seem quite right… ‘I mean, we still need to get into Torvaston’s secret mountain enclave.’

‘Right,’ said Jay.

‘Just with a bit more urgency than before… you aren’t actually deaf, are you?’ I said, the latter directed at Wyr, who lay prone on the floor. His air of casual ease had seemed a bit studied.

He rolled his eyes and sat up. ‘She’s good,’ he said, indicating Emellana with a nod of his head. ‘But so am I.’

‘So you heard all of that.’

‘A fair bit of it, yes.’

‘I’ve a theory,’ I said. ‘Let’s test it.’

Wyr waited.

‘Ancestria Magicka.’

Wyr sat like a stone, carefully failing to react.

‘Last time I said that, you twitched.’

‘Doubtful.’

‘You did.’

‘Did not.’

‘Can’t I just wring his neck?’ I said plaintively, to no one in particular.

‘No,’ said Jay.

‘Damnit.’

‘But I might.’

Wyr held up his hands, and scooted back a bit. ‘I deny everything.’

‘He’s heard of Ancestria Magicka, I’m sure of it,’ I said, ignoring Wyr. ‘How do you suppose that’s possible?’

‘He’s met them before,’ said Jay.

‘Right. It’s no coincidence that we ran into you, is it?’ I nudged Wyr with my foot, a gesture not quite a kick. ‘You were meant to intercept us.’

‘Nope,’ said Wyr.

With a sudden, swift movement, Emellana did exactly what I’d been dying to do. She swept the stupid hat off his head, and hurled it out over the peak. The wind caught it, and sent it sailing merrily away.

‘Hey—’ said Wyr.

He got no further, for Emellana picked him up, and stood poised to send him sailing straight after his hat. ‘Still no?’ she said in a pleasant tone.

Wyr swallowed. Good he might be, but I’d love to see the levitation charm that could contend with a precipitate fall down about a thousand feet. ‘Er,’ he said. ‘Okay, I might have heard of them.’

‘They hired you,’ said Em.

‘Maybe.’

‘What were you supposed to do?’

Wyr sighed, hanging in Emellana’s uncompromising grip like a sack of bricks. ‘I was meant to help you.’

‘Help us?’ I said, frowning. ‘Why? Oh.’ I scrubbed at my face, frustrated with myself. ‘They wanted the scroll-case.’

Wyr smiled nastily. ‘It was good of you to make it so easy for me.’

‘And Addie?’

‘The unicorn? Anything else I could get off you I could keep. That was the deal.’

‘Except the scroll-case?’ I growled. ‘Did you hand that over, or did you keep it?’

Wyr opened his mouth, and shut it again.

I found that Emellana was looking gravely at me. ‘You’ve an idea?’ I said to her.

‘I think it is a good thing that Wyr has crossed our path again.’

I blinked. ‘It is?’

‘For one thing, it seems clear that the scroll-case may be important. If Mr. Wyr no longer has it, he is one of the few people who knows where it is.’

‘All right.’

‘He may also be one of the few people who knows where Torvaston’s hideaway is to be found.’

‘How do you figure that?’

‘Why were you hired?’ she said to Wyr. ‘You’re some kind of treasure hunter, aren’t you?’

‘It’s a nicer name than “thief”, I’ll give you that,’ said Wyr.

‘You know all the old stories, especially those pertaining to ancient magick and potent artefacts. And you’ve made it your life’s business to track them down. You’re clearly on the best of terms with the traders up at Vale.’

‘What’s your point?’ said Wyr.

‘You know where Torvaston’s hideaway is because you’ve been there. Ancestria Magicka probably hired you for that very purpose.’

Wyr examined his fingernails. ‘I hate to contradict you when you’re being so charmingly complimentary, but you’re giving me too much credit. I haven’t been in there, because no one has.’

‘No one?’

‘No. The entrance is known, but what’s behind it remains a mystery because no one can open the damned door. Believe me. I’ve tried.’

‘The scroll-case,’ I said. ‘Is that why you wanted it?’

‘I don’t imagine you noticed,’ said Wyr, ‘because it’s faded, and camouflaged to boot. But there’s a mark on that map just about exactly where the entrance is. Coincidence? I think not.’

‘So you think something about the scroll-case either opens the door, or could explain how.’

‘We’re hoping so.’

By “we”, I supposed he meant his crummy employers, too.

But.

‘The case itself?’ I said. ‘Or something, perhaps, that was in it.’

I had the satisfaction of having, finally, disconcerted Wyr. ‘There was something in it?’ he said, looking in disbelief at me.

‘When we found it, yes.’

‘And you did what with the contents, exactly?’

‘That would be my business.’ I looked at the Baron. Hopefully my eyes said: Tell me you brought the fork, the watch and the snuff box.

Hopefully his smile said, Of course I did.

For once, Wyr appeared to have nothing to say.

I smiled. If he’d trotted off to Fenella Sodding Beaumont with that scroll-case and imagined he’d solved the mystery, he was in for a disappointment. They all were.

Provided, of course, that I was right, and it wasn’t the case itself that held the secret.

Was it madness to gamble the entire success of our mission on the probability that a silver fork, a gilded pocket-watch and a questionably-decorated snuff box held the key to a lost enclave that generations had failed to penetrate?

Yes.

But madness is kind of my style.

‘Well,’ I said to Wyr. ‘You’d better throw in your lot with us.’

‘What?’ said Jay.

‘Why?’ said Wyr.

‘Because that case isn’t going to get either you or Ancestria Magicka very far without its contents. And that means we’ve a much better chance of getting in than any of the rest of you.’

‘Therefore?’

‘Therefore, showing us the door is likely to work out better for your greedy little dreams.’

‘Right,’ said Wyr. ‘You’re just going to turn me loose in there and let me grab whatever I want. Sure.’

‘There’s one thing in there that we want. I don’t think we need to care too much about the rest. Anything merely materially valuable is yours.’ If we didn’t manage to put a sock in him somewhere between here and the other side of that long-sealed door, anyway. I didn’t give a crap about jewels and courtly goblets and what the hell else. I just wanted Torvaston’s failed moonsilver project, and the books.

‘Ves…’ said Miranda, doubtfully.

‘Got a better idea?’

She hesitated. ‘No.’

‘Me neither.’

Nor did anyone else, judging from the silence. Alban, to my delight, exuded a serene confidence in my judgement that I found highly gratifying.

I hoped it wasn’t just a pretence.

‘You’re on,’ said Wyr at last, and held out his hand to me.

I crossed to where he still dangled in Emellana’s grip, and shook it. ‘One thing,’ I said. ‘If you screw us over again, Emellana and the Baron will have you for dinner.’

‘We like meat,’ Alban offered, with a friendly smile.

Wyr gave him a sour look. ‘Got it.’

Emellana didn’t so much set him down as drop him from a great height.

‘Ouch,’ said Wyr, and picked himself up. ‘Thanks for that.’

‘Just deserts,’ said Em.

I did so like her style.

Jay sidled my way. ‘Where did all that come from?’ he said in an undertone.

‘About the contents of the case?’ I whispered back. ‘Do you recall much about the history of table etiquette?’

‘Not… really.’

‘I was forgetting it myself, until just now. See, we saw a metal utensil with a handle and twin prongs and immediately connected it with tableware. And it does resemble an early fork. But the fork didn’t come into common use in western Europe until the eighteenth century, and this thing has to be like a century and a half older than that.’

‘It isn’t a fork!’

‘Exactly. Also, the pocket-watch isn’t so badly out of place, except that it has two hands. Early ones had only an hour hand.’

‘So it… isn’t telling the time?’

‘Might be. Might be tracking something else entirely.’

‘And the box?’

I shrugged. ‘Snuff was coming into fashion by the early sixteen hundreds, so it could just be a snuff box. Then again, maybe not. And there’s no saying that it was used to hold snuff, even if it is.’

Jay grinned. ‘Who knew a taste for historical trivia could be so useful.’

‘Well, me. It’s not like it’s the first time.’

‘The secret of your success?’

I thought about that. ‘Yes,’ I decided. ‘It pretty much is.’

‘That feeling,’ said Wyr, attempting to writhe out of my grip, ‘is not mutual.’

‘That’s too bad,’ I said, handing him off to Emellana. He didn’t stand much chance of getting away from her. ‘What are you doing here? And where’s our scroll-case?’

‘I sold it,’ he said, eyeing Em with distaste. ‘Obviously. What else would I do with it?’

‘Take an interest in a certain map that was drawn on it, by chance?’

‘What map.’

‘Ah. So your appearance up here is a coincidence.’

‘Apparently.’ He smiled at me, and flicked the brim of his hat.

I felt like sweeping that hat off him and hurling it (or him) off the peak.

‘Look, this is not going to fly. You’ve some kind of interest in the Hyndorin Mountains, and if you don’t speak up, Em’s going to break you into pieces and feed you to the birds.’ I’d seen a few large ones sailing overhead, birds of prey by the looks of them.

Wyr surveyed Emellana, unimpressed. ‘She’s big, but old ladies don’t tend to scare— argh!’

I don’t know what Em did, but obviously it hurt. She looked at him, cold as winter, and said, ‘Talk.’

‘I don’t—’ said Wyr, but this unpromising beginning was interrupted by a shimmer and a ripple of magick, emanating from the stony henge. Someone was coming through.

A tall figure appeared. Troll-tall, broad-shouldered, and achingly familiar. He paused only for a split second in the centre of the henge, and made as if to go away again — then saw me, and stopped dead. ‘Ves.’

A moment later, Baron Alban was bearing down on me with obvious intent to hug. Ruthlessly.

Remembering, in the nick of time, my uncuddleable state, I took a few hasty steps back. ‘Alban?’ I said, in disbelief. ‘Great. Now I’m hallucinating.’

‘Nope,’ said Jay succinctly.

Emellana smiled at the vision. ‘Highness.’

‘You’re really here,’ I said. ‘How.’

Alban stopped a few feet from me, uncertainty replacing the relief on his face. ‘Long story,’ he said.

‘It’s not you,’ I tried to explain, regretting my instinctive retreat. ‘It’s— uh, long story too.’

‘All right.’

‘You first?’

He sighed, and it struck me how weary he looked. In fact, he looked most unlike himself. He was clad in plain travelling clothes, devoid of ornaments, his head bare; the attractive, bluish-green tones of his skin and bronzed hair were gone, and he was merely brown-haired, with lightly tanned skin. It would be like me showing up in jeans and an old t-shirt, with my natural hair colour showing. ‘Is everything all right?’ I added.

‘It is now,’ he said, smiling at me, and he was the same old Alban again, even if rather less well turned-out. He looked around at Em and Jay and Miranda, and focused with a frown on Wyr. ‘Since you all appear to be hale and in one piece… who’s that?’

‘Our nemesis,’ I said. ‘Apparently.’

Wyr, visibly more disconcerted by the Baron’s presence than by Emellana’s, said nothing.

To my dismay, Alban swayed on his feet, and quickly sat down — outside the range of the henge. He held up a hand as I started forward. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve just been through one too many henges today, that’s all.’

‘As in, how many?’

‘As in, I’ve been travelling the Ways since last night trying to find you.’

‘All night? Why? What’s happened?’

‘Nothing terrible,’ he said, seeing the alarm in my face. ‘Or at least, probably not. Everyone at home is well. But some new information came to light shortly after you left, and I thought you needed to know about it.’ His gaze strayed to Wyr.

‘Can you bottle him up?’ I said to Em.

‘Gladly.’

‘Wait—’ said Wyr, then clapped his hands to his ears and made a disgusted face. ‘DEAF?’ he thundered. ‘GREAT. THANKS.’

‘It was that or an incomprehension charm,’ said Em with a faint smile. ‘Perhaps he’d prefer to hear everything in Swahili.’

‘I like this approach,’ I said. ‘Simple. Effective.’

Em inclined her head.

‘Can we leave it on him all the time?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Muting charm?’

‘No.’

‘Damn.’

‘Though I quite see the appeal.’

We all looked expectantly at Alban.

‘It’s two things,’ he said, shaking his head as though to clear it. ‘Firstly, Mother accelerated the translation process on Torvaston’s papers. She seconded half a dozen language scholars from anywhere she could get them. Certain research projects at the University have ground to a halt, but we got the document finished. Did you know — or guess — that Torvaston had made himself into a kind of human griffin?’

I blinked. ‘A what?’

‘I don’t mean half bird, or something like that. I’m not expressing this well.’

Small wonder, if he’d been criss-crossing back and forth between henge complexes for twelve hours straight. Or more. My unease grew. ‘Carry on.’

‘It’s more the way griffins operate, in the magickal sense. You know, how they function as a source of magick, increase its potency in areas they populate, that kind of thing.’

‘Got it. So Torvaston was doing the same thing?’

‘Not just Torvaston. Do you remember that odd kind of… ritual you read about, at Farringale? From the diary? Where members of the Court went up to the top of the peak and, um, absorbed some of the griffins’ excess magick.’

‘Yes.’

‘They were doing that to try to curb the overflow, or so we suppose, and that’s probably true, but did you consider the probable long-term effects of that?’

‘Sort of—’

‘Or how it was done?’

‘Sort of,’ I said again. ‘It’s all been speculation.’

‘Well, they had… tools, whether they knew it or not. A certain kind of metal — we don’t know what it was, except that it was called magickal silver by Torvaston in his book — has a property which permits it to soak up magick like a sponge. And that happened to be a fashionable material at the Court of Farringale. Everyone who was anyone had at least a trinket made from the stuff.’

‘Go on.’

‘There’s no known source of that metal anymore, and most examples of objects made from the stuff have passed out of existence or knowledge. Most.’ He looked at me.

I had no trouble seeing where this was going. ‘So they absorbed… too much magick,’ I said faintly.

He shrugged. ‘Maybe. Whatever the cause, the general effect the griffins had on Farringale spread to many members of the Court, too. Which was like… quadrupling the griffin population of Farringale in the space of a number of years. You can imagine the outcome.’

‘That’s how Farringale was flooded?’

‘Probably. Torvaston’s notes stop before the crisis, so we can’t be sure, but the pieces fit.’

I felt saddened, somewhere under my unease. Torvaston’s desperate attempts to mend Farringale had most likely contributed to its demise. We’d speculated about just such a possibility, but I was sorry to have it largely confirmed.

‘But,’ said Jay. ‘But. What did they imagine they were doing with the excess magick? Absorbing it, however it was done, doesn’t just make it go away.’

He was looking at me as he said that last part, and indeed I was functioning as living proof of that concept.

‘Indeed not,’ said Alban. ‘Torvaston had a dual problem on his hands. He could see that Farringale was in danger of magickal excess — but he also had, we think, a touch of clairvoyance about him. His notes refer, more than once, to a “decline” he foresaw happening somewhere in the future. It seems he was attempting to manage a project which would solve both problems at once—’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Somehow using the dangerously excessive magick of Farringale to balance out the decline that was beginning elsewhere?’

‘Something like that,’ Alban agreed. ‘He began buying up all this magickal silver he could get his hands on. Almost bankrupted the royal family to do it, too. And he drew in all the brightest magickal minds he could get hold of in an attempt to build… some kind of device.’

‘A device?’

‘See, the problem with the flows of magick being under the influence of living creatures is that they can’t be… managed, very well. They breed too much, or they die off, and disasters happen. Either the enclave is flooded out, or its magick dries up and the place just dies. Torvaston wanted a solution that could be carefully maintained, and that meant a non-biological one.’

Jay said, ‘So he was building a… regulator.’

‘Right.’

‘Out of moonsilver. Or skysilver, or whatever the Yllanfalen call it.’

Alban looked oddly at him. ‘You guessed that part.’

Jay just looked meaningfully at me.

‘I was hoping,’ said Alban, ‘that the lyre hadn’t—’

‘It has,’ I said. ‘I used it. I’m sorry.’

He looked me over, more carefully, and I felt the faint brush of his magick against mine. ‘Then I am too late,’ he said heavily.

‘Hey,’ I said, trying for brightness. ‘I’m still alive.’

‘It’s not that it’s deadly,’ said Alban, with a smile probably meant to be reassuring. ‘Just… difficult to manage. Or reverse.’

‘It does have its drawbacks,’ I said lightly.

‘And that’s probably why the whole lot of them fled over here,’ he continued. ‘They would have felt less painfully overwrought, in a more potently magickal landscape. And they would have been less of a danger themselves. This is why they didn’t join Her Majesty at Mandridore.’

And I sighed. If I’d hoped Alban would have some solution that said, You CAN go home, Ves! I was doomed to disappointment. ‘Why didn’t they throw away that damned magickal silver,’ I said, somewhat sourly.

He smiled at me. ‘Have you thrown away that lyre?’

‘Fair point.’

‘Magick has ever been seductive. Anything that can promise to amplify its potency, very much so.’

I couldn’t disagree. ‘And there’s the whole question of dependency.’

‘True.’

Which, secretly, bothered me the most. Swimming as I was in magick up to my very eyeballs, would it even be possible to go back to the way I was before? Would I… miss it? Would I need it? Had I, in fact, been turned into a raging magickal alcoholic overnight?

It didn’t bear thinking about. Because I had a horrible feeling that I would.

‘Okay, anyway,’ I said briskly, setting these unproductive ideas aside. ‘Do we know what became of Torvaston’s magickal regulator?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Alban. ‘We don’t know if the project succeeded. If it did… the thing might still be at the old court, of course, but then presumably the disaster there would never have happened.’

‘Baroness Tremayne would surely have said something about that, if it was,’ I said. ‘If she knew about it.’

‘She probably didn’t. Torvaston seems to have kept that particular project quiet, hence spending his family’s money on it instead of the Court’s.’

‘Would he have left it behind?’ said Jay.

‘That’s the thing we were thinking,’ said Alban, shaking his head. ‘If he had to leave our Britain, it seems far-fetched to imagine he’d abandon his life’s work. And where better to complete so ambitious a project, but here?’

‘Ohh,’ I said, and stood straighter, electrified. ‘It’s here.’

‘Specifically, probably, somewhere in those very mountains you’re looking for,’ said Alban. ‘If it wasn’t in Vale.’

‘How do you know we already went to Vale?’

He grinned. ‘Because I went up there first. Something about the trail of disaster and chaos I found struck me as very Ves-like.’

I blushed. ‘It was necessary.’

‘It always is.’

‘So we’re looking for Torvaston’s masterpiece,’ I said hurriedly. ‘A thing which, if it had ever worked, could’ve saved Farringale.’

‘And which could save countless other enclaves,’ said Alban. ‘Both those over-flooded with magick, and those starving to death without it.’

My eyes widened. ‘This is big.’

‘Very. And there’s one more thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You aren’t the only ones.’

‘What?’

Almost imperceptibly, he winced. ‘That’s the other thing I needed to tell you. There was a… spy uncovered, at Mandridore.’

‘Uh oh.’

‘Um, more than one. We’ve reason to think somebody gained access to these papers some time ago, may have had opportunity to translate at least parts of it. And someone, probably the same someone, had been trying very hard to get their hands on that scroll-case from Farringale.’

‘Let me guess,’ I said, with sinking heart. ‘Someone with ties to Ancestria Magicka.’

‘Bingo. And, Ves, I think they’re already here.’

Of course they were. It was the answer to every question I’d ever asked myself about Fenella Beaumont’s motives, or Ancestria Magicka’s aims.

The mere thought of such an artefact falling into those hands brought me out into a cold sweat.

And they were, once again, way ahead of us.

‘Giddy gods,’ I said faintly. ‘We’re doomed.’