contemporary fantasy

Baroness Tremayne lived between the echoes, as she had once put it. Then again, did she in fact live? Her insubstantial shadow world bore little resemblance to the vivid reality I knew. She’d pulled me sideways, as she had done before, and landed me in the middle of it, with all its darkness and distracting, flickery lights. I was still in the vaulted hall, but in some blurred, altered version. Between the echoes. I still did not understand quite what that meant.

The baroness, unchanged, regarded me gravely. She wore the same wide-skirted silk gown, ruffled with lace; the same artfully piled and curled arrangement graced her white hair. ‘How curious a mind,’ she said. ‘Why do you return here? Did I not already satisfy your needs?’

‘Oh! Yes,’ I said, watching Jay out of the corner of my eye. He was prowling the hall, searching for me, his form shadowed and his movements jerky in my vision. ‘May we invite my companion to join the conversation?’

The baroness did not even blink, but in the next moment Jay stood beside me.

‘Jay, this is Baroness Tremayne,’ I said. ‘The lady who gave us the cure. Baroness, my colleague from the Society, Jay Patel.’

It felt a touch peculiar, making so mundane an introduction under such unusual circumstances. But Jay took it with aplomb. He made the baroness a bow, and flashed one of his more charming smiles. ‘You saved many lives, ma’am.’

‘I could not have done so without you to carry my aid to the afflicted, hence I suffer your presence now.’ She spoke coldly. ‘But you trespass, and you steal. What is it you now want from my poor Farringale?’

‘We are here by royal command,’ I said quickly. ‘Their Majesties at the newer court, Mandridore, seek to learn more of the fate of Farringale, and sent us to discover what we could.’ I opted to keep the other part of their vision, the restoration of the city, to myself for the time being. First things first, and how might the prickly baroness react to the idea?

‘And what is your success?’

Any hopes she might be eager to tell all evaporated on the spot. ‘Well, we have some theories—’

‘As I heard.’

‘Are they… accurate?’

The baroness just looked at me. At last she said: ‘What will become of this knowledge, if ‘tis given to you?’

‘Ah… that would be up to Their Majesties,’ I said tactfully.

Baroness Tremayne said nothing. I could not even tell if she was thinking it over. Her face was impassive.

‘If I may ask,’ Jay stepped in. ‘Why do you linger, Baroness? By whose will, or order?’

‘And, how?’ I added.

The baroness drew herself up. ‘I remain by order of Her Majesty, Queen Hrruna, and His Majesty King Torvaston.’

I exchanged a look with Jay, my heart leaping with excitement. I saw the same hope reflected in his face. But gently, gently; the baroness was wary. ‘Are you here to care for the place?’ I suggested.

Her lips quirked. ‘Care for a dead land? What would be the use, pray?’

‘It isn’t dead, though, is it?’ said Jay. ‘Its people are gone, but the city goes on. The magickal surges. The griffins. The Sweeping Symphony — is that your doing? Everything has changed, and yet, nothing.’

‘And nothing has aged,’ I said. ‘Nothing. Including you.’

‘Requires life, to grow older,’ said she. ‘The life poured out of Farringale long ago, and from me.’

‘You’re an echo,’ I said. ‘Are you? Though we might term it a shade.’

‘Matters the word so greatly?’

Fair point.

‘Baroness,’ said Jay. ‘Please. Tell us what happened when Their Majesties left Farringale.’

‘Her Majesty required a promise of me, and I will keep it. I shall not tell.’

‘Was it Torvaston, the king?’ I probed. ‘He was… ill, wasn’t he? He and many of the Court. Magick-drowned, like Farringale itself.’

Her eyes flicked to me, but still she did not speak. I thought she grew more still and silent with every word I spoke.

Jay said, ‘If Farringale lives on, it is Their Majesties’ doing, and by Their will. It must be. Who else could wield such influence over this place? And they set you and others like you to watch over it all the long ages through. Why? It is because they did not want it to pass out of existence forever. They were trying to preserve it, Baroness, weren’t they? For the future. And we come here by order of Their Majesties’ descendants. They want to restore it to the world. If that day comes, your long vigil will be over and you may rest. Knowing this, will you not help us?’

Baroness Tremayne, caught between a promise to a long-dead queen and a command from the current one, grew hostile. ‘You come from Their Majesties, in sooth? How do I know it to be so? You are mere adventurers. Already you divest Farringale of its treasures.’

I thought guiltily of the jade-coloured book and the jewelled scroll case. ‘We carry some part of those treasures back to the new Court,’ I said. ‘And we are no adventurers. How, if so, do we come to be here at all? There is but one door to Farringale that ever opens now, and there are three keys to open it. Two remain with the Court, as I think you know well, Baroness. How came we to get those keys — not once, but twice — without the Court’s approval? You must know how impossible it must be to take them without it.’

‘And that door is significant, too,’ said Jay. ‘Why leave a way back at all, unless someone, someday, was supposed to use it?’

The mystery of the third key flitted, once more, across my mind. Why did House have the third key? How was it that the Baroness Tremayne knew our House well, as she’d previously claimed? Had someone, so long ago, foreseen the Society, and intended that it should be involved in the ultimate saving of Farringale?

That was absurd, wasn’t it? How could it possibly be so?

I gave my head a shake to clear it. One problem at a time, Ves. (Or, more accurately, seven or eight).

To my intense disappointment, the baroness did not speak again. She looked from Jay to me, visibly torn — and then, with a thin, whispering sigh, faded away. Jay and I found ourselves blinking in the bright light of the hall, the shadowed echoes dissolved around us.

‘Damn,’ said Jay softly.

I was inclined to agree — until I noticed Rob, standing in the middle of the hall with a huge tome in his hands. Another lay at his feet. Both were bound in dark leather, with polished silver hinges.

‘Ouch,’ he said.

‘Ouch?’ I echoed.

‘Came looking for you. Fell over these. We can add “books appearing out of nowhere” to the list of Farringale’s oddities.’

As one, Jay and I rushed over there to look.

The title page of the book Rob held read as follows:

A Treatise Upon Magicke: Its Sources and Histories, penned by Torvaston Brandilowe.

‘From before he became king?’ said Jay. ‘He was a scholar?’

‘Not just any scholar,’ said Rob, holding the book steady as I carefully turned pages. ‘This is about ebbs and flows — what we’re calling surges, is my guess.’

‘And the whole question of Dells and their sources or fonts,’ I added, speedily scanning pages. ‘We have nothing like this.’

Jay squatted down to examine the second book. Smaller than the first, it had a shabbier look about it, as though it had been more regularly used: the leather of its bindings was worn in places, and some of the page edges ragged. ‘Looks like a journal,’ Jay reported. ‘The author doesn’t identify him or herself, but the handwriting’s the same.’

Torvaston’s own diary. My heart beat quick with excitement. What a prize! ‘Written in Court Algatish,’ I said. ‘Archaic usage, naturally. Val and I would need a few weeks alone with these to wring the sense out of them.’

Indira dropped lightly down beside me, descended from somewhere above, and her hands weren’t empty either. She carried a heavy crown, wrought from some metal I did not recognise: it looked coppery, but brighter, and also vivid gold, and somehow silvery as well. Plus, like any good royal crown, it positively blazed with jewels.

‘How did you get that?’ I gasped.

‘I… didn’t? It fell into my hands.’

We all turned to look up at the distant walls where Indira had lately flitted. One of the glass compartments was empty, its glass front not so much broken as absent.

‘Our thanks, Baroness,’ said Jay, echoed quickly by me.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘I think we’ve got enough, for the time being. Let’s go home.’

As may be imagined, the crown in particular caused a sensation back at Mandridore, though I think its effects upon Alban were mixed. Like his adoptive parents, Their Majesties the Royals, he gazed at it with the starry-eyed awe one cannot help feeling in the presence of something so fabulously beautiful and expensive — and, in this case, significant. But in him I detected a trace of dismay, too. Would this ornament, heavy with precious metals and duty alike, someday adorn his head?

Upon our arrival at Their Majesties’ retreat house, we’d been greeted with rapture. By the time we’d arrived, the hour was far advanced and night long since fallen; but if we had turfed our royal employers out of bed, they made no sign of it.

It was just Jay and me again, too. Rob had elected to take Indira home, somewhat to her irritation, but he was right. We weren’t justified in hauling Indira (or Rob either) across the country at three in the morning.

‘Successful venture then, Ves?’ Alban had said when he had collected us from Farringale’s doorstep. I’d fallen into his car, bruised and laden with loot, and groaned.

‘Fabulously,’ I grinned, thrilled despite the bruises. Jay was right behind me, carrying the larger of the two tomes Rob had fallen over, with the crown set atop.

The baron’s — prince’s — brows rose into his hairline at that.

An hour or so later, we’d been plied with refreshments (to my relief), and sat ensconced with Their Majesties in their favourite parlour, our acquisitions set carefully upon a low walnut table nearby. Their Majesties, for a time lost for words, were beginning to rally.

‘We haven’t had chance to read the books closely yet,’ I said. ‘You might do so more speedily than we. And that one — the little green one — is still indecipherable. I think it’s magick-drunk. As is the scroll case, which inexplicably contains zero scrolls because it’s occupied by a silver fork, a gilded pocket-watch and a snuff box with a picture of a rather sexy troll lady enamelled into its lid.’ I’d had some time to work on the sealed ends during the drive back to Mandridore, and had at last prised them off.

‘We will have them studied and deciphered,’ King Naldran assured me, politely glossing over the snuff box.

‘These are wondrous finds,’ said Her Majesty Ysurra, her usually rather dull eyes shining with excitement. ‘This is Torvaston’s crown, is it not? I believe it must be. My husband’s is said to be the very same once worn at Farringale, but I have always thought that to be false. It has not the look of such an heirloom. A replica.’

‘I begin to suspect that everything contained in that hall belonged to Torvaston or Hrruna, or was of some importance at Court,’ I said.

‘It does have the air of a museum,’ Jay agreed. ‘They knew they would have to leave a little before the final crisis, of course — what we know of Farringale’s fall always said its decline took place over several months. So they prepared a sort of memorial hall. It’s another item in support of our theory that they were trying to save something for the future. I think they hoped someone would someday find the way back.’

‘Though,’ I put in thoughtfully, ‘why put Torvaston’s crown there? Even if Torvaston himself wasn’t to join his wife at Mandridore, the crown could have been passed on to the next heir.’

‘A salient question,’ said King Naldran. ‘And there are so many.’

‘Why did they not destroy the griffins?’ said Queen Ysurra. ‘If, as you propose, they are the source of these magickal surges?’

I tried to imagine the stone heart that could destroy so much majesty, and failed. ‘I believe it was an arrangement that worked well for the city, for many years,’ I said. ‘They celebrated the surges, and made use of them. Only at the end did it… get out of hand, and the ortherex descended. We still do not know quite what happened.’

King Naldran nodded. ‘And who would not wish for such a magickal surplus, from time to time, if it could be harnessed in some way?’ He paused, but not in thought. He surveyed me, and subsequently Jay, with a speculative air.

Alban — seated, I had noted, much farther away from me than might previously have been his wont — smiled faintly at his father. ‘You had better tell them,’ he said.

The king nodded, but it was the queen who spoke. ‘We hoped you would be successful, though you have far exceeded our expectations,’ she said. ‘We have a proposition for you, if you will hear it.’

‘Say on,’ said Jay, and I nodded.

The queen hesitated. ‘We understand you to be without fixed employment at present. But, it has also become apparent that your ties with the Society remain strong. Perhaps we have been misinformed?’

Tricky question. ‘It’s complicated,’ I said.

‘Ah. Our idea was predicated upon the former, and it is thus: if you indeed seek to begin anew as your own entity, the Court would like to fund your enterprise, and bring it under our aegis.’

I was too surprised to speak. Whatever I might have anticipated by way of reward (if that’s what it was), this wasn’t it.

‘Forgive me,’ said Jay, more astute than I was. ‘May I ask why?’

Queen Ysurra inclined her stately head. ‘We have long admired the Society’s work, and its… unusual methods. And it is apparent that the Court could benefit greatly from a similar force, particularly if we wish to pursue the question of Farringale. Since our various goals may be fulfilled by the same means, I propose this solution for us both.’

What to say? It was a generous offer, and would have been perfect — if it weren’t for the fact that our secession from the Society had only ever been a sham.

Alban knew that, of course, or he’d guessed. I looked for a moment at him, but he gazed blandly back, giving me nothing. What was he up to?

‘I think we couldn’t accept,’ said Jay. ‘As you say, our ties with the Society remain strong…’ He, no more than I, could find a simple way of explaining that we’d been lying through our teeth.

Alban’s tiny, cynical smile appeared. ‘They’re still Society folk, mother. I did tell you.’

The queen sighed. ‘Unfortunate.’

‘Perhaps not,’ I said. ‘We have no real desire to set up independently, but that doesn’t mean we can’t help each other here. Why not form a partnership with the Society? You may assemble a joint force to work on the Farringale problem, of which we could conceivably be a part. And,’ I added, with a wry smile of my own, ‘I think we’d need their help anyway. After all, they’ve got the third key.’

Queen Ysurra did not look entirely happy about that last part, which intrigued me. ‘So they do. We will think upon your suggestion, Miss Vesper.’

‘With,’ put in Alban, ‘the firm intention of finding it an exceptionally good idea.’

‘Though I’ll add this: any restoration plan involving the destruction of those griffins is unlikely to find favour, either with us or with the rest of the Society.’

The queen looked down her royal nose at me, but she nodded.

So, that was that. I made a private resolve to pump Milady for information about that third key, next time I got the chance. How was it that the Society came to have it — and why had Baroness Tremayne claimed to know our House so well? Problems to pursue later.

Course, it also turned out later that the pocket-watch was Torvaston’s and served a more complicated purpose than merely telling the time; the snuff box contained a signet ring, though not a royal one; and the inside of the scroll case was etched with a map of the Seas of Segorne on one half and the Vales of Wonder on the other. The plot, as they say, promptly thickened.

But that’s a story for later, because what happened next was the one thing guaranteed to derail the Life of Ves in pretty short order.

My phone rang.

This may seem like a disappointingly mundane occurrence considering the build-up I’ve just given it, but it all comes down to who was on the other end.

‘Ves,’ I said crisply. I don’t usually answer my phone that way, but this was a number I didn’t recognise.

‘Cordelia?’

It was a woman’s voice, one I hadn’t heard in years.

‘I do not know why you insist on calling yourself by that peculiar abbreviation,’ continued the voice. ‘I gave you the most beautiful name I could think of.’

‘…Mother?’ I croaked.

‘Hello, dear.’

Dear? Since when was I dear? ‘How did you get this number?’ I said, turning my back on Jay, whose expression of incredulity was just too much to be borne.

‘I have spoken to Milady.’

‘Milady gave you my number?’

‘I needed to speak to you.’

‘Wait. How do you know Milady?’

‘Honestly, Cordelia. Everyone knows Milady. Now, listen. I need you to come here at once, and bring those pipes of yours.’

‘My…’ I paused to breathe. ‘My pipes? How do you know about my pipes?’

‘I consulted the register of known Great Treasures and their present owners. Imagine my surprise to find your name on the list! And it couldn’t be more perfect. Bring the pipes, and the Waymaster. I’ll see you soon.’

‘Mother—’ I began, using what has sometimes been termed my dangerous voice. For one thing, that list is privileged access only, it’s not like you can just Google it or something. For another, how dare she call me out of the blue and propose to haul me off to goodness-knew-where?

And what was Milady doing enabling her?

But she’d ended the call. I uttered a few choice expletives, and ended up glowering darkly at Jay.

‘Your mother doesn’t have your number?’ He could’ve said, you’ve got five lungs and a double spleen? in approximately the same tone.

‘It’s complicated.’

‘I see that.’

I took a deep breath. ‘We appear to have a change of plans.’

Turn page ->

***

Next stop: a “fun” outing with Ves’s family. I’ll tell you, it’s not going to be pretty…

First though, permit me to introduce you to this episode’s shiny ebook edition, in case you’d like your own copy (paperback to come!). And since it’s a tradition now, let me also discreetly put this nice Patreon thing here for a second, in all its extra-stories and advance-release-episodes glory.

That done… on with the Ves&Jay show!

‘I think so,’ whispered Indira, gazing at our griffin companion like a woman ensorcelled.

If true, the implications were astounding. It has long been supposed that magickal beasts are drawn to the magick that soaks every inch of a Dell or Enclave. What if, sometimes, it was the other way around? What if it was the beasts who brought the magick to the Dells? Or some combination of the two?

We’d let griffins die out. They’d been hunted for their claws and horns and bones: “For he hath his talons so long and so large and great upon his feet, as though they were horns of great oxen or of bugles or of kine, so that men make cups of them to drink of. And of their ribs and of the pens of their wings, men make bows, full strong, to shoot with arrows and quarrels.” (Mandeville again). Their talons and feathers and eggs were said to have various restorative or curative properties, and perhaps that was even the truth. There was also the incidental fact that they could be somewhat dangerous. For all these reasons and more, they had been hunted to destruction centuries ago.

A chagrined thought drifted across my mind. If magick had declined, was this partly why? We’d been killing off some of its most potent sources for the sake of a feather or two.

I’m occasionally ashamed to classify myself as human.

One of the griffins was staring right at me.

I managed not to squeak, and I was proud of myself for that small victory. The griffin in question might have been the smallest of the three, but that was not saying much. It could still have swallowed me in a single snap of its beak.

I stared back.

Those eyes, the deep green of fresh moss, held a spark of liveliness I found surprising considering the potency of my magickal lullaby. All right, maybe it was arrogance to think my own mere magicks could hold a trio of griffins for more than three seconds. But I had got those pipes from a creature of similar magickal eminence, which said a lot for their efficacy; and it had worked before, when I had almost been swallowed by one.

This griffin, though, was definitely not lulled. Nor was it making violent objection to our foray into its territory. It looked like… dared I believe it? Like it was not so much tranquillised by the music as simply… enjoying it.

‘Well,’ Jay croaked. ‘If you’re right about this lot, it’s just possible they won’t eat us.’

Indeed. Because according to Lady Tregawny, the population of Farringale had made festive pilgrimages out here to the griffins’ mountain in order to… what, exactly? Our new hypothesis cast her account in a different light. They had allotted me a fair draught… what had they been doing? Were they celebrating those surges of magick, or — or making use of them?

Especially Torvaston.

‘Considering we are the first people to set foot in Farringale for quite some years—’ I began.

‘As far as we know,’ put in Jay.

I inclined my head in acknowledgement of this point. ‘Their earlier aggression may have had more to do with surprise than a deep-seated need to rend us apart.’

‘They can’t be the same ones as were here in Torvaston’s day,’ Jay said, shaking his head.

‘Can’t? Do you know how long griffins live?’

‘No,’ he allowed. ‘How long do they live?’

‘I’m not sure anyone knows. We kept killing them for their feathers.’

Jay grimaced. ‘Right.’

Something unpleasant was happening to the floor. I’d become aware of it first as a faint warmth, and then a low, peaceful, thrumming, as of nectar-drunk bees.

Then the ground began to pulse, slowly, rhythmically, like a heartbeat.

It was a heartbeat. The goldish lightning crackled and buzzed around the three griffins, whose lassitude fell away. Soon, all three wore sheet lightning like cloaks, and the jolts of energy made my teeth buzz.

I realised what was happening, but too late.

‘This is going to hurt,’ I gasped, and was all too swiftly proved right.

Perhaps half an hour later, the four of us lay, felled like little trees, alone upon the mountainside. Our griffin “friends” had gone.

Okay, they had left us intact, and that was nice. But they had used us like some kind of magickal dumping-ground and that I did somewhat resent.

Despite my weakness, Lady Tregawny had said, and that, too, suddenly made sense. If you pumped a frail witch full of this much magick, she might not swound so much as suffer a heart attack on the spot. How fortunate that her ladyship had survived the experience long enough to write about it.

I tried to speak, but only a strangled choking sound emerged.

Rob began to cough. I’m pretty sure somebody else vomited, but I could not tell who.

‘Right,’ I managed, after another minute or so of deep breathing. ‘Let’s turn this to good effect, shall we?’

‘How?’ gasped Jay.

‘First, I’m going to need my chair back.’ I staggered to my feet, and limped over to the broken remains of my little vehicle. My technique was poor, I’ll give you that. I merely rammed lumps of wood roughly together and welded them there by pure force of will and magick. The result was as graceless as I so often was, which seemed fitting. Plus, I enjoyed a fractional lessening of the teeming magick that soaked my every pore.

Jay was getting into the spirit of things. ‘I want some more books,’ he said faintly, having managed to clamber into his own chair.

‘The shiny ones,’ I mumbled. ‘In the glass.’

‘Yep. Those.’

‘And then we are getting out of here,’ said Rob, sternly. ‘I think we’ve had enough fun at the Farringale party for today.’

The way I felt just then — like a wrung-out dishcloth, or a withered prune, while at the same time pulsing with magick like an overcharged battery — even I was not tempted to argue.

I will spare you an account of our somewhat ragged journey back into Farringale. Let’s just say that breaking my chair to bits and then clumsily shoving it back together did little to improve its navigational capabilities. Since I was also bashed up myself, and remained so despite Rob’s hasty magickal medicine, I cannot say that I enjoyed the experience much.

As we trailed away, forming a straggling line across the sky, those great, roiling storm-clouds shifted; bright lightning flashed; and out came the griffins. They remained aloof from us this time, distant shapes soaring far overhead, wheeling upon the winds. An occasional, hollow cry drifted down to us below, a piercingly lonely sound.

Liberating some more treasures from their enchanted glass houses proved more difficult than we were hoping. Even Rob’s splendid glass-breaking trick proved ineffectual when performed outside of a magickal surge, magick-soaked as he was. They had their uses, it seemed, even if they did render one too squiggly to easily take advantage.

So, we waited. I sat on the floor in one corner of the vaulted hall, feeding porridge alternately to myself and Ms. Goodfellow (it wasn’t half bad, after all, though it could have done with a liberal lacing of chocolate spread). I tipped the contents of my satchel over the marble tiles and surveyed the loot.

One Mauf, previously acquired.

One hand-written book, apparently written in gibberish.

One set of memoirs, penned by the mysterious Lady Tregawny.

One as-yet-unidentified scroll in jewelled case, courtesy of Pup.

‘You know what confuses me about this place?’ I said after a while, but no one answered. Jay had wandered off to the other side of the wide hall, and applied himself to a study of some of the titles shelved there. Indira was floating in a chair somewhere over my head, scrutinising the long rows of glass-bound treasures (or Treasures?) stored farther up. ‘They aren’t all books!’ she had announced some minutes before, and then maintained a steady report of her findings: ‘A bunch of keys. A… hat, or something. Can’t tell. Oh, a crown!’ My ears pricked up at the word “crown”, especially when it was shortly followed by: ‘A few Wands, a sceptre, orb…’

Hmm.

‘It’s the fact that everything is so well-kept,’ I continued, even if no one was listening. ‘Look at it. Dust-free, grimeless. All right, so the Sweeping Symphony would keep that under control. But it’s more than that. It’s like the Starstone Spire in here. These books are insufficiently aged. Same goes for the furniture, the buildings themselves — the only signs of decay we’ve seen are an occasional stagnant puddle and some day-to-day level building deterioration. I mean, look at this.’ I opened the hand-written journal with its pretty jade covers. ‘This has to have been written hundreds of years ago, but the ink hasn’t faded at all. I could conclude that someone put a pretty powerful preservation charm on it, but would that last so long, or so well? And has someone done the same with every single object in this entire city? I think not.

‘Then there’s the ortherex. Those surges of magick might explain why they’re still here, but I doubt it. If they could thrive on nothing but magick alone, why do they bother with trolls at all? If there are no living hosts left here, then they cannot breed, and should have died off long ago.’ I’d had some of these questions lurking at the back of my mind for weeks, without arriving at any particular conclusions. Now they were really piling up.

Jay drifted nearer. ‘You’re not veering back to that time travel theory, are you?’

‘No. Not quite that.’

‘Not quite?’ Jay propped himself upon my chosen wall and surveyed my little haul thoughtfully. ‘You’re right, of course. I’ve been wondering the same things.’

I banged my head back against the wall in frustration. ‘Why is there no information on this? It’s maddening. And I could go on. The griffins. Why are they still here? Is it just that, with Farringale being closed off, no one could get in to hunt them down? It might be that simple, but then again maybe not. And what if my tossed-off suggestion was right? What if they are the same ones that were here when Farringale fell? What would that mean?’

‘Either they live an incredibly long time,’ Jay said. ‘Or, like everything else in here, they apparently don’t age.’

‘That’s it.’ I pointed a finger at Jay, sitting up straighter. ‘That’s it. Is everything incredibly well preserved in spite of the passage of time, or is it not experiencing the passage of time? If nothing ages, is it because the process has been interfered with, or is it simply not happening at all?’

‘You mean time doesn’t pass in Farringale? No. It must, or why would there be any need for the Sweeping Symphony? How would those stagnant puddles develop?’

I gnawed a fingernail. ‘Maybe it does, but just… not much of it. Maybe it’s still pretty much 1658 in here.’

‘Ves, you can’t put a stasis enchantment on an entire city.’

‘I can’t, no, and neither could you. I’m pretty sure none of us could pull that off now. But we’re talking about centuries ago, before the decline of magick. And, we’re talking about a city that’s drenched in so much magick it’s drowning in it. Was it impossible here, so many years ago? Oh! You know what else, that would sort of explain how Baroness Tremayne’s still here, too. Or was, the last time.’

I remain, whispered the Baroness, so near to my ear that I jumped with a shriek.

‘What?’ Jay said, scrambling towards me. But he was too slow. By the time he reached the spot I’d been sitting in, I was gone.

Turn page ->

Indira had flown higher, much higher. I stared up at the distant underside of her elegant chair with some concern. Given her propensity for shattering bones, I didn’t want to end up taking her home in several pieces. ‘Indira?’ I called.

‘Give her a moment,’ said Jay.

Well, if Jay didn’t feel like being older-brother-protective, far be it from me to play Mother Hen. I waited, my thoughts busy.

If Jay was right and all four mountains were illusory: why? And what was causing it? We each saw only one mountain, which meant we were each being fed a separate vision. By… something. Well, by the mountain. If it was indeed the source of magick for Farringale Dell, what might it not be capable of?

But why did it wish to hide itself?

‘If you were an age-old magickal mountain with a penchant for griffin headgear, where and why might you hide?’ I said.

Rob, having positioned himself directly below Indira, did not answer. Catching our youngest team member if she happened to plummet to her inevitable death seemed like a great priority to me, so I didn’t interrupt him.

‘For some reason, I’m having trouble fitting myself into the headspace of a rock-based landmark.’ Jay kept a close eye on Indira, too, which might not have been helping his focus.

Focus, focus. Hm.

How about if I stopped thinking of it as a mountain? Perhaps more importantly, it was (if we were right) a magickal… font, I suppose. Terms vary for such things, and we don’t truly understand them very well. To call the heart of a magickal Dell a “font” likens it to some kind of fountain, merrily pumping out magick all the livelong day, and that’s in no way an accurate idea. You can’t switch it on or off, like a tap. But Dells — capital D, because they really are markedly different from your common-or-garden dingle — grow up around such a source. It’s what makes them magickal, and sets them apart. It’s rare, but once in a while a Dell falters and dies, because its source fails. We still have no idea why. I’d been inclined to think it a consequence of the decline of magick, but we’d since learned that it happened on the fifth Britain, too, so that idea was out.

In this instance, we had the opposite problem going on. That this occurred on the fifth Britain was no surprise whatsoever; the place was bursting with magick. But for it to happen here? Different situation entirely. The Heart of Farringale Dell was in no danger of drying up; on the contrary it was prone to giving rather too freely of itself. And its former citizens had been disposed to celebrate the fact.

First point, then: did I believe that the entire Court of Farringale would go tramping many miles through forest and dale to reach this magickal mountain, on the occasion of their festival? No. They could have flown, of course, as we were doing, but that would take a lot of chairs, and anyway, nothing about Lady Tregawny’s memoirs had implied she might have been airborne for any part of it. Had they all flown, like Indira? Probably not, but maybe. Even if they had, how far could a swarm of people safely fly, even pumped up on magick?

So that suggested the mountain was situated not too far from the city, or (more sensibly) vice versa.

Right, then.

‘Indira!’ I yelled. ‘You’re my spotter.’

‘What?’ The word floated faintly back to me on the wind.

‘You see anything move, scream.’

‘Ves,’ yelled Jay. ‘What are you doing?’

This I ignored. Not because I was indifferent to my partner’s concern but because I was a bit busy.

Step one: I summoned up the strongest wards I had, and cloaked all four of us in them. I added a splash of camouflage into them this time. Whether it would help much in the circumstances I did not know, but it couldn’t hurt.

Step two: I wafted a little higher, and began a wide circle of the city. In one hand I had my Sunstone Wand; in the other, my syrinx pipes.

I took the precaution of laying a gentle sleep-spell on the pup before I began. I didn’t want her leaping out of the chair.

The melody I chose was a mixture of two distinct things: the first being the pacifying charm I had employed on our last visit to Farringale, and the second pure siren call. I’ve put a lot of time and practice into the art of pipe-playing and music-based magick over the past decade or so. You do, when you’re unexpectedly put in possession of a great Treasure and even permitted to keep it. My music soared over Farringale, haunting and alluring and calming all at the same time.

‘You’re a madwoman, Ves!’ shouted Jay, but I felt him join his magick to mine even as he spoke. The music gained in both intensity and volume, enough to spread to every corner of Farringale Dell.

‘You got a better idea?’ I yelled back.

I thought I heard a distant chuckle from Rob, but it may have been a trick of the wind.

Indira spotted something. Perhaps it wasn’t movement, for there was a distinct lack of screaming. Instead she raised one slim arm in the air, Wand in hand, and sent a burst of scintillating light flying high into the sky, like a flare. The light split and spread and poured down again, swirling chaotically around an apparently featureless stretch of dappled green-and-golden trees.

‘Gotcha,’ I muttered, and veered that way. My chair shot through the skies at dangerous speed by then; wind whipped into my face, stinging my skin, and the cold threatened to numb my lips.

As soon as I drew near to the rosy-lit trees, I began to see why Indira had lit them up. A suppressed shimmer of magick lay under every leaf, and when I got within twenty feet or so the trees themselves wavered like water.

You’d think this would have been warning enough. In my defence, I was probably moving too fast to stop in time anyway. Intent upon the maintenance of my rippling melody, I angled my chair in between the broad trunks of two ancient trees — and they disappeared in a flash. What I saw instead was the rugged, rocky expanse of an undeniably solid mountain rising steep and sharp before me.

I had about two and a half seconds to admire the view before I collided with it. The crunch was sickening.

I lay, spread-eagled and dazed, among the wreckage of my poor chair, blessing the shields which had — slightly — cushioned the fall. I only blazed with hurt almost everywhere.

‘Pup?’ I croaked, and groped for my satchel. Ms. Goodfellow came crawling out, and curled up upon my stomach.

‘Good,’ I gasped, and returned my pipes to my lips. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried playing a wind instrument when all the wind has just been smartly knocked out of you, but it isn’t easy.

Jay came bombing into view. Being forewarned, courtesy of Ves, he did not repeat my graceless performance but landed with a crisp snap and leapt out of his chair. ‘How the hell is it that you manage to keep not being dead?’ he said, at (I thought) unreasonable volume.

I waved a hand at him in a hush, you gesture. ‘They’re coming,’ I said, removing the pipes but briefly from my lips.

‘Who are— oh my god.’ A shadow passed over the sun; Jay looked up, and up, and stood mouth agape, for soaring overhead was a magickal beast straight out of legend. The size of a small ship, with a lion’s body and a bird’s plumage, it was mottled in white and tawny-yellow and red, its body wreathed in crackling lightning. Its beak was shut, talons peacefully curled as it spiralled its lazy way down to where I and my pipes lay.

Another two came wafting down behind it.

Considering that, last time, we’d been greeted with sharp beaks and claws, I thought this something of an improvement.

But Jay stood rigid as a rock, until the first griffin landed barely five feet away and he began to tremble. ‘Uh,’ he whispered, and apparently ran out of words.

I couldn’t blame him. I make it a point of honour never to visibly lose my shit, but it was difficult not to. The last time I had been in close quarters with a griffin, it had been trying to eat my face. Easily thirty times my size, this one was passive only because I played. Probably? What would happen if I ran out of breath?

Rob. Rob would happen. A dark shape flitted across the sky not far from the majestic griffins; Rob was ready, his enchanted knives in hand, to get those blades between me and the griffin if necessary.

Keep it together, Ves, I told myself. I didn’t want us to die that day, but I didn’t want any griffins to die that day either.

‘Ves,’ said Indira, very softly, from behind me. I jumped. I hadn’t seen or heard her approach. ‘Ves, you can stop playing.’

I leaned back my head, and signalled with my eyes that she was insane.

She smiled faintly. ‘No, really. It’s all right. Stop.’

Returning my wary gaze to the nearest of the three griffins, I tentatively let my song trail off. The melody continued without me, its volume a little muted, but the enchantment held.

‘The rocks have got it,’ said Indira.

Of course they did. ‘Right,’ I said, and, very carefully, sat up, resettling my unhappy pup in my lap. ‘You realise you two could rule the world if you wanted to?’ I added, addressing Indira and Jay.

‘Some other time,’ said Jay tightly.

‘Where did you get those pipes?’ said Indira.

I considered trotting out the line I’d used on Jay (classified, sorry), which was true enough, but I felt I owed Indira for the rocks thing. ‘Got them from a unicorn,’ I said nonchalantly.

Jay eyeballed me. ‘Of course you did. Would this be a good time to enquire what we’re doing playing chicken with a trio of griffins?’

‘We’re getting a good look at everything.’

‘Everything?’

‘Mountain plus occupants.’ I made a go-on motion with my hands.

Jay gave a slightly shaky sigh, and squared his shoulders. ‘Should’ve been a librarian,’ he muttered under his breath.

Indira, however, was already way ahead of him. And, for that matter, me. ‘It’s not the mountain,’ she said softly.

“It”, I supposed, meant the magickal heart of Farringale Dell, and she was right. It was a shapely and attractive mountain, to be sure, and all aflourish, but it was no magick-soaked source of one of the most potent Dells in history.

The griffins, though. Those were highly interesting.

Back in the mid thirteen hundreds, a fine fellow named Sir John Mandeville wrote a travel memoir. Val has a prized early edition in the original French, which no one — no one — is permitted to go near. In this wondrous volume, he describes the griffin thus (loosely translated): “…Some men say they have the body upward as an eagle and beneath as a lion; and truly they say sooth, that they be of that shape. But one griffin hath the body more great and is more strong than eight lions, of such lions as be on this half, and more great and stronger than an hundred eagles such as we have amongst us…” I’d now say even this princely description rather understated the case. Eight lions? Maybe triple that number, and… keep going.

They were mesmerising, terrifying, awe-inspiring — and they radiated magick. They had so much of it they couldn’t hold it; hence the gold-touched lightning that rippled and flickered ceaselessly over their glossy feathers, even when they stood, heads drooping, gently at rest.

I risked a quick glance upwards. We had attracted three. How many more were up there?

‘Is it the griffins?’ I said in awe. ‘Are they the heart of Farringale?’

Turn page ->

‘Farringale destroyed by its own king,’ said Jay, and whistled. ‘That would be reason enough to expel him from Mandridore, certainly.’

‘And to cover the whole thing up afterwards,’ I agreed. ‘I’m sure Hrruna wouldn’t have wanted her husband to be remembered that way.’

‘So they went off into the Vales of Wonder looking for a new source,’ said Rob. ‘And the excess of magick attracted the ortherex, who feed off some derivative of it; and they’re still here. It fits, Ves, but do you have any evidence for it?’

‘We’re working on that.’

Indira was shaking her head, though she did not speak.

‘What’s on your mind?’ I prompted.

‘Surely…’ she said. ‘Surely no king would ever make such destructive decisions. And Torvaston is spoken of as a wise leader.’

‘I don’t imagine he made any such decision consciously, or rationally. But who decides to become an alcoholic? It is the kind of thing that happens by slow degrees, usually driven by some other factor. Perhaps Torvaston was feeling the pressures of leadership. Farringale was, after all, the most powerful and famous of the Fae Courts at the time. He might find himself turning more and more to something that eased the pressure, made him feel better. Some of his courtiers might follow suit.’ I knew my ideas bordered upon treasonous, or they might be if I was a subject of Their Majesties myself. It’s why I had opted not to mention any of my thoughts to Alban. Nor would I, until I had sound evidence to support them. ‘Or it may have been unintentional. If I could turn myself into a pancake and Indira could fly, what else could you do with that much magick? What if they were trying to achieve something truly stupendous, and it got out of hand?’

‘But how?’ said Jay. ‘How does a magick-drunk king flood an entire city?’

‘Right. Top question. We need to find the source of magick for Farringale Dell and get a good look at it. I’m thinking it might be possible to draw on it, in some way, or to goose it — I don’t know. Magick is too weak in modern Britain to pose any such problems. I doubt anyone’s been magick-drunk in decades, if not centuries.’

‘If they have,’ said Jay, ‘it’s been as adroitly covered up as Torvaston’s fall.’

A sobering thought. The Hidden Ministry was, after all, dedicated to keeping magickal secrets — besides being rather a secret itself. Had something like this happened more recently? I should call Mabyn, at the Forbidden Magick department. If it had, maybe she would know.

But, priorities. ‘Mauf,’ I said. ‘Lady Tregawny’s memoirs. This is why I brought them. Does she speak of anything that sounds like it might be the magickal heart of Farringale Dell?’

‘Not as such,’ said Mauf, but he spoke hesitantly. ‘She was writing a little before Torvaston’s day, of course, but she writes of a festival at midsummer. It was held only once every five or so years. We processed out of the City and into the Dell, my fellowes and I, garbed in festive raiment and all of a tumult, with our Gaiety and our Song. Their Majesties went ahead of us, as is Their Wont, and equally Their Right; and we of the Lesser Court did not reach the summit for some hours. When at last our moment came, so spongy was I that forward I went, hugger-mugger, and swounded quite away. ‘Gramercy,’ said I when once more I was myself, for despite my unseemly weakness they had allotted me a fair draught…’

‘Spongy?’ I said, befuddled.

‘Drunk,’ Mauf supplied.

‘Perhaps she meant inebriated in the ordinary sense,’ said Jay. ‘But if she did, what is the “fair draught”? It hardly makes sense for it to be some kind of beverage, or why did they go out into the Dell for it?’

‘And the summit?’ put in Rob. ‘Of what, and why were they going there?’

‘She does not say, in any greater detail than I have already shared,’ said Mauf.

‘Why would she?’ I said. ‘She was describing a familiar ritual. One headed up by Their Majesties and their Court…’ Something about the word summit nagged at me.

‘There is a mountain,’ offered Indira in her quiet way. ‘I saw it.’ Rather than add any more words to her sentence, she pointed upwards. She’d seen it when she was flying.

And that reminded me. ‘There is a mountain somewhere out there,’ I said excitedly. ‘Alban mentioned it when we first came here. He said that, according to legend, it was so tall that its peak touched the clouds. It’s where the griffins are supposed to have nested. Maybe that’s the source! The festival! You said five years or so, Mauf. It wasn’t every five years precisely?’

‘Lady Tregawny implies that the dates were variable,’ said Mauf. ‘In the year she speaks of, the festival came upon them apparently by surprise.’

‘So it was early!’ I was growing excited, for everything was falling into place in my mind. ‘Don’t you see? These magickal surges had been happening for a while, but only rarely — approximately once every five years. But even by Lady Tregawny’s time, some years before Torvaston, they were becoming more frequent. When they were rare, they could be celebrated and enjoyed. But when they became more common, they’d soon become disruptive and alarming. If the Court was in the habit of drawing heavily upon these surges when they came, like binge drinkers on a Saturday night, couldn’t that easily get out of control? Couldn’t some people end up taking far too much?’

‘If that’s the case,’ said Rob, ‘maybe it was not Torvaston who flooded Farringale.’

‘He and his courtiers might have hurried the process along,’ I argued. ‘Something changed a welcomed and celebrated event into a catastrophe. We need to find that mountain.’

Rob raised a hand. ‘Slow down, Ves. Think. If the mountain was as tall as all that, how were so many people reaching the summit?’

‘I’ve just spent three and a half minutes as a pancake.’

‘I take your point. Indira, where is this mountain?’

This simple question puzzled clever Indira more than it ought. She took her time in answering. ‘A long way off,’ she said. ‘And at the same time, very close. I cannot say… I think my perceptions were disordered.’

‘We were all a little disordered,’ said Rob kindly.

‘Then again, maybe not,’ I said. ‘Indira just pulled a great fairy routine, and Ms. Goodfellow was both airborne and upside down.’

Rob, Indira and Jay looked at me blankly. ‘What point are you making?’ said Jay.

‘Nothing else made sense for that period of time. Why should a mere immoveable landmark prove unaffected? Perhaps it was both near and far away. I suspect that reaching it might not be so simple as walking to it.’

‘So, then,’ said Jay, folding his arms. ‘We find the unfindable mountain, climb its unclimbably tall peak, and see if we can get ourselves magick-drunk enough to fall off again?’

‘Well.’ I blinked. ‘Except for maybe that last part, yes.’

‘Is anything ever going to be simple around you?’

‘Around me, no. But if you ask Milady nicely, she might assign you a quieter duty. You’d excel at rare books. That’s usually about trawling the non-magicker libraries for misplaced spell tomes and the like. Rarely gets exciting. Or you could maybe—’

‘Not serious, Ves.’

‘Oh.’

Rob, damn him, was hiding a grin with very little success. Even Indira looked amused, somewhere behind her mask of composure.

‘Let’s get a move on,’ I said hastily. ‘Mauf, we need a clue. Does Lady Tregawny give any hints as to where the procession started off from, or what route they took?’

‘I am afraid not, Miss Vesper.’

‘There might be something else, somewhere in here,’ said Indira, turning in a circle to take in the full extent of the enormous library.

‘Maybe,’ I agreed. ‘The first problem is finding it. The second… well, I don’t know that we’d find an A-to-Z Manual of Magickal Surge Festivities or anything like that. Nobody writes dreary tomes about birthday parties or stag dos for the same reason. We all know our own traditions too well to need instruction on the basics. We learn it growing up.’

‘Mr. Maufry,’ said Indira. ‘There is nothing about the mountain, I suppose?’

‘If I had a week to search…’ said Mauf.

We could have stayed for a week, if we had needed to. That possibility was why I had brought things like the porridge-pot along. But who wanted to spend a whole week sitting around in the biggest, best and most beautiful library on the planet, reading book after book after book after… all right, I did. I do. But not right then, and not if I had to do it on a steady diet of porridge. Those joys could wait until after we’d restored Farringale to habitability.

Ha, ha. Said I confidently, as though there weren’t about a thousand obstacles to get past in the process.

Ves. Focus!

For some reason, I’m starting to hear those words in Jay’s voice. I do not know what this means.

‘For once,’ I said, breaking in upon a debate between Indira and her brother as to the likelihood of a useful book’s being unearthed inside of a week. ‘I mean, I never thought I would say this, but: I don’t think books are the answer here.’

‘Not?’ Jay was incredulous.

‘Not.’

‘Are you the real Ves?’

‘I’m the Ves who recently spent three splendid minutes as a pancake. You decide.’

‘I withdraw the question.’

‘Thank you. I think Mauf and Rob were right: we shouldn’t spend too long here while these surges are going on.’

‘Did I say that?’ objected Rob.

‘I could see you thinking it, several times. And it’s true. We don’t know how often these surges are going to happen, and they could be dangerous. Last time, the Patels almost broke three or four limbs apiece and I seriously considered spending the rest of my life as a perfectly-cooked breakfast dish. A few more doses of that, and who knows what could happen? We should finish up our immediate business and get out.’

‘I concur,’ said cautious Jay, not at all to my surprise.

‘Fine. So we do not have time to spend a week searching the library. Which means! It’s time to play Trial and Error.’

‘Oh god.’ Jay actually backed away from me.

‘It’ll be fine.’

‘Are we still pretending the griffins don’t exist?’

‘Er.’ To be truthful, I had forgotten them a bit. Their habit of lurking (at least by report) right at the top of the very peak we were aiming for was a tad bit inconvenient.

However.

‘We’ve survived them before. Let’s go.’ I scooped up Mauf, the happy jade-green book and Ms. Goodfellow, stuffing all three into my satchel (well, the books anyway. I placed my pup into her sleep-nest with tender care). Then I marched out of the great, marble hall in the direction of the exit.

Behind me, I heard a great, weary sigh from Jay. ‘Ves. It’s this way.’

‘Right.’

In the end, we made Indira lead, which did not at all make her happy. But she was the only one of us who had yet set eyes upon this mountain.

Not that it helped much. She headed off confidently enough when we regained the street, but soon faltered and became confused. ‘The problem is,’ she said, ‘I received no clear impression of its direction from my former vantage-point. And it is deceptive.’

‘Vantage-point,’ I mused. ‘Right. Rob, Jay, would you fetch us some of those chatty chairs?’

‘On it.’ Rob dived back into the library with Jay at his heels.

‘Except not the rude one,’ I called after them. ‘The one that insulted my padding?’

They returned with two chairs apiece, and set them all before me. It was my very great pleasure to witch them up in a trice, and I say that because it was shockingly easy. Apparently I was still fizzing with magick.

No wonder people got addicted to it.

‘Hup,’ I said, hurling myself into the arms of the nearest chair. I’d chosen one with a wide seat and a thick cushion: space enough for my all-important satchel.

Up we went. There was a movement recently to mandate the use of seat-belts in all airborne apparatus, chairs included, which was thankfully shouted down, but I began to see their point when a gust of air almost upended my chair and me with it.

‘Be advised,’ I called down, my heart all a-pound. ‘Playful currents up here.’

‘To say the least,’ said Jay, rising unsteadily to my approximate level.

I turned my chair in a slow circle, and received a dazzling view of the city laid out before me like a bejewelled chess board. Its layout was not dissimilar, vaguely grid-like, with the dappled lights and darks of sturdy buildings, though the roads curved and wound their way sinuously in between.

Beyond the confines of the city spread the rest of Farringale Dell: lusciously forested, and interspersed here and there with clear, sparkling lakes. Perhaps some part of it had once been tamed and inhabited; if so, those days were long gone. The forest had reclaimed the Dell, and begun to encroach upon the streets of the city, too.

I saw no mountain.

Then, suddenly, I did. It shimmered into view, cresting the sea of broad-leaved trees like some kind of desert mirage. ‘There!’ I shouted, pointing excitedly. Clouds swirled around the peak, as advertised, lightning shooting in crackling golden coils. Griffins, presumably, lurked somewhere within.

I became aware that my announcement had not caused quite the sensation I’d expected. As I was trying to bounce out of my chair with excitement, Jay was doing the same not far away — only he was waving his arm in a different direction altogether.

So was Rob.

So was Indira.

‘Wait, wait,’ I said, and brought my chair to a hovering halt. ‘There cannot be four such mountains.’

Even as I said the words, a voice at the back of my mind said: Whyever not?

‘No!’ I said, smothering it. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Only one can be real.’

‘Or none,’ said Jay.

‘Right. Where then is the real one?’

Turn page ->

By the time I returned, two of the beleaguered books had begun beating themselves against the walls of their glass-fronted houses. Whether they were trying to escape, or merely entertaining themselves, was unclear.

‘Mauf,’ I yelled over the tumult. ‘What is going on here?’

‘They appear to be in a state of some excitement,’ said Mauf gravely.

‘Yes, I can see that, but why? Can you talk to them?’

‘I would as usefully talk to a wall. A more empty-headed set of volumes I never did encounter.’

‘Is that the truth, Mauf, or do you exaggerate for effect?’

‘A very little exaggeration only, Miss Vesper.’

What could he mean? The word “empty-headed” must be an expression he had picked up from us, or some other book; it could not literally apply here. Were the books devoid of useful content, or were they somehow empty of words altogether?

I wanted to examine one. Unfortunately, the glass walls behind which they were imprisoned must have been magickally reinforced; for all their pounding and bouncing, none had contrived to escape.

So I fetched out my Sunstone Wand, and with a flick and a whisper, sent a bolt of crackling fire at the nearest of them — which happened (entirely by chance, I swear) to be the happy-natured jade-green book.

My little fireball bounced harmlessly off the glass and fell to the stone floor, where it lay sulking and sizzling.

‘Damn.’

‘You want that one?’ said Rob, withdrawing the Lapis Lazuli Wand from his sleeve.

‘Please, and thank you.’ I smiled.

He did his glass-shattering trick. I’ve never been able to master it. The glass imprisoning my chosen book turned ink-black, then cracked into a thousand pieces and fell away in a rain of… sand, this time.

‘Ouch,’ Rob grunted. ‘Powerful enchantments in here.’ A sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead. He frowned, and stared at the Wand as though he’d never seen it before. ‘I feel like that shouldn’t have worked.’

I ran and snatched up the book before it could get any bright ideas about, say, flying away, and opened it with breathless eagerness.

I saw at once what Mauf had meant.

‘It’s not that there aren’t words,’ I said, showing the pages to the others. ‘But something’s… happened to them.’ Page after page was full of gibberish, the genuinely nonsensical kind. I didn’t see a single coherent word, not in any language I knew, and besides that they were no longer arranged in the tidy rows one tended to expect. A great many letters, and in some cases whole words, had wandered off, wriggling all over the page like snails at a picnic. As I watched, some turned odd colours and faded away, then reappeared.

‘It isn’t some kind of code?’ said Jay, but doubtfully.

‘Not consistent enough, surely?’ I said. ‘Do you see any coherence whatsoever?’

Mauf, still tucked under my left arm, said clearly: ‘Magick-addled.’

‘It’s what?’ I said.

‘Round the bend,’ clarified Mauf. ‘It probably gets worse every time.’

‘Every time what… uh, Indira?’ Something moved at the edge of my vision. I looked that way just in time to see Jay’s sober and serious sister shoot into the air like a firework, her dark skirt and airy white blouse fluttering. Her hair streamed in a wind I could not feel.

While it was not unusual to see Indira levitate, and most adeptly too, this was different. For one thing, she rose and rose to at least twenty feet up, rapidly approaching those gauzy and unlikely clouds. For another thing, she was laughing in a fashion most unlike her.

‘Indira?’ called Jay. ‘That’s too high. Come down now.’

‘Is that even possible?’ I breathed, awed. Levitating to twenty feet? Actually, forget it. Indira wasn’t even levitating anymore. She was flat-out flying.

‘I never saw her do that before,’ said Jay. ‘Indira!’

Mauf gave what felt curiously like a bookish sigh. ‘I can see you are all to become quite tiresome. Perhaps you might restore me to the other chamber? I was engaged in a most interesting conversation.’

I barely attended to this speech, for Indira was shouting something. ‘There is so much of it!’ she laughed. ‘It’s wonderful. Like drowning in chocolate.’ There was more, but she became less coherent and farther away in equal measure.

The floor was thrumming again. I discarded my shoes a second time, and my socks, too, pressing my bare feet to the stones. That felt quite nice actually, so I lay down and stretched out. The low thrumming filled me, too, in soft pulses of warmth; it was like lying in the grass on a warm summer afternoon, that feeling of balmy contentment exactly, only about fifty times as potent.

I’d put myself eye-level with my useless fireball from earlier. Should it not have burned out by now? But it lay there still, spinning lazily, and emitting occasional puffs of coloured smoke.

Mauf lay near me. ‘Miss Vesper,’ he said. ‘Far be it from me to question your choices, but might this not be an excellent time to leave?’

‘No,’ I said, and giggled. ‘It’s lovely, lovely, lovely.’ The jade-green book and I sang it together, and I was distantly aware that I was smiling like an idiot — dancing, too, despite my recumbent posture — but the part of me that might normally have cared about such peculiar behaviour lay quiet and inert.

Rob sat slumped against a nearby wall. He’d stopped trying to fish Indira down and instead sat with his gaze fixed upon the clouds far above, smiling faintly. He still had the Lazuli Wand in hand; once in a while he gave it a spiralling little flourish, and some magickal thing leapt into being. A butterfly of painted silk. A tiny smoke dragon. A stream of miniature cars which roared across the floor, tooting tiny horns.

This looked like fun, so I joined in. I filled the air with dancing cakes, created a self-operating toot-organ with a taste for jazz (if you’ve never heard of a toot-organ, don’t ask me to explain for I’m sure I cannot). I even turned myself, briefly, into a pancake, but since this caused Rob to eye me hungrily I hastily changed back.

I slowly became aware of Jay standing over me, shrouded in a mantle of smoke dragons and gyrating cakes but nonetheless, inexplicably, frowning. ‘How can you be so severe,’ I said to him, and with a flick of my Wand I gave him a crown of sad faces etched in light and shadow.

‘Ves,’ he said. ‘We need to leave.’ His voice was slurred, and his movements sluggish, but he spoke firmly.

‘But how could we, when the furniture is so flatteringly eager for our company?’ For a party of chairs from a nearby chamber had that moment come clattering in. For all their graceful construction, silken upholstery and mahogany frames, they were clumsy in their movements, and chattered in coarse voices.

‘Look at that one,’ said their leader, scornfully. ‘Thinks it’s a chaise longue, does it? I’ve seen better padding on my grandmother’s couch.’ I realised, with a start, that the chair was speaking of me, for it delivered a kick to my shin with one slender, polished leg.

‘I like this one,’ said another, flouncing over to Rob. ‘Substantial. Firm. A chair you could trust.’

This, all told, was not an unreasonable description.

‘It is of no use,’ said Mauf. ‘You will have to wait until the flow has ebbed.’

‘The flow?’ said Jay, pausing in the act of prodding my various soft parts with his toe. Not gently.

‘Of magick.’

This made so much sense, I was overwhelmed by the sheer beauteous perfection of it. The possibility had entered our heads not so long ago, and now here we were experiencing something of that exact sort! I began to laugh, so delighted was I.

Jay, though, was neither so impressed nor so convinced. ‘Is it magick or are they high?’ he muttered, and retired to a corner.

‘Both,’ I tittered. ‘I think.’ I watched, some of my joy fading, as Jay slumped to the floor and sat with his head against the wall, his eyes closing. ‘Jay! Why aren’t you high?’

‘I feel unwell,’ he said shortly.

‘How unfair.’ I jumped to my feet. I don’t know what I was planning to do — run after him and make him enjoy the experience? — but a powerful headrush halted me where I stood, and I swayed.

A moment later I was back on the floor again, higgledy-piggledy.

‘Ouch,’ said Jay, apparently his idea of sympathy.

I looked up. Indira was still flying, swan-like, some way above. As I stared, glassy-eyed, something horned and yellow-furred and puppish floated slowly past, upside down and grinning.

‘You know,’ I said, tightly shutting my eyes. ‘Since you mention it, I’m not sure I feel so great either.’ That balmy, cocooned feeling faded in a rush, leaving me breathless in its sudden absence. Instead I felt squeezed, as though a great weight pressed down on me. Energy surged up from the floor, from the walls, from the very air, jolting through me like pulses of lightning; every hair on my body rose, and I began hyperventilating with the effort to breathe. I couldn’t sit still. I was too much of a livewire for that.

I thought I heard, as from a great distance, the voice of Mauf screaming, ‘Purple-hued malt-worm!’

All of this sounds terrifying, doesn’t it? Only, it wasn’t. I felt exhilarated, like I could jump out of a plane — or, perhaps, like I just had. I felt more alive than I ever remembered feeling before; and when, some unmeasurable time later, the energies washed out of me like the tide and left me empty, I felt bereft and diminished.

I sat, quiet and listless, as details of my surroundings slowly filtered through to my befuddled consciousness. Mauf lay tutting a few feet away. ‘I told you to leave,’ he muttered darkly. Our purloined jade-green book had ended up stuffed up my shirt; I had no memory of putting it there, and hastily retrieved it. It had ceased to chortle, or to speak, and lay unmoving in my hand, somehow seeming to weigh twice as much as it had before.

Rob sat still against the wall, blinking and shaking his head. Jay I could not see, nor Indira — until both came hurtling into view together, falling at ill-advised speed from the heavens.

They landed with a crunch.

‘Ouch,’ I said.

Jay groaned.

‘I was fine,’ said Indira waspishly as she picked herself up.

Jay just lay there, grimacing. ‘You wouldn’t have been in another five minutes.’

He had a point. To my dismay, all of Rob’s smoke dragons and butterflies were dissolving into dust and winking away. My cake chorus was already gone, and I no longer felt either the desire or the capacity to turn myself into a giant pancake.

Whoever would’ve thought I’d ever say that last bit with such gravity, or with such regret?

I got up, and upon finding myself generally stable I went over to Jay, and hauled upon his arm until he righted himself. ‘Anything broken?’

‘Not for lack of trying.’

I looked at Indira. ‘So how many times have you broken a limb?’

‘Three,’ she said, unblinking. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Oh, no reason.’

Jay snorted.

I retrieved Mauf, and then Goodie, who I found stranded upon a shelf some six feet from the floor. I had not imagined the part about the flying Dappledok pup, then. Had I imagined any of it? No. Jay wasn’t wrong to use the word high, for we’d certainly lost touch with a few useful things like rationality and common sense. But we hadn’t been hallucinating.

I tried to remember when I had ever heard of such a surge happening before, or any similar effects if it had. Nothing came to mind — except, of course, the storyteller’s tale on Whitmore. ‘The Seas of Segorne,’ I mused aloud.

‘And the Vales of Wonder,’ said Jay.

Seeing Rob and Indira wearing twin expressions of confusion, I explained. ‘We heard a rumour on Whitmore. They said that the last king of Farringale — our Farringale, that is, so Torvaston the Second — escaped to the Fifth Britain with an entourage. And they went looking for places prone to excesses of magick.’

‘But no,’ said Indira, frowning. ‘Torvaston and Hrruna founded the new court at Mandridore.’

‘So the history books say, but they’ve been wrong before.’

Indira looked appalled, as well she might, studious girl that she was. The only comfort I could offer was a pat on the arm. ‘History’s a changeful beast. It’s one of the exhilarating things about it.’

‘Crushing and exhilarating,’ said Jay darkly.

‘Utterly crushing.’

‘But why wouldn’t Torvaston go to Mandridore?’ said Indira.

‘This is one of the questions we’re here trying to answer,’ I said. ‘The Troll Court had nothing about Torvaston, and precious little about the early days of Mandridore.’

‘Nothing at all?’

‘Not even a scrawled note.’

‘But that means…’

‘It means the story may have a kernel of truth to it. And Torvaston must have had a really solid reason for fleeing into the fifth instead of going with his wife.’

‘Like?’ That was Rob. He’d listened in silence up until then, but his grim face suggested that his thoughts were running along similar lines to mine.

‘It’s only a hypothesis, yet,’ I said cautiously. ‘But I’ve wondered before. What could possibly compel Torvaston to abandon his wife, his people, his court, and flee? And what could motivate him to go looking for dangerously magick-drunk places like the Seas of Segorne? Jay, I think you might be right. I think they were expelled from the Court — because they were addicted to magick.’

Rob nodded.

‘Magick-drunk,’ Indira repeated. ‘You mean it literally.’

‘It was fun, wasn’t it?’ I said, with a small smile. ‘I could get used to having that much magick around myself. I think the Court of Farringale did, too — or some of them, at least. Jay is proof that not everyone’s as deeply susceptible to the allure, but… such things have happened before. What might you do, if you needed your fix but there wasn’t enough around?’

‘Surely not,’ said Rob. ‘You mean to say Torvaston flooded Farringale?’

‘Yes,’ I said, utterly serious. ‘That’s exactly what I think happened.’

Turn page ->

‘What the bloody hell?’ growled Rob, staring in awe.

I had no words to offer. They’d all gone.

If I’d wondered before how an abandoned city came to be so well-kept, I had my answer now. Farringale’s wide, white boulevard lay stretched before us, flanked on either side by grand mansions in pale or golden stone and brick. A legion of shabby broomsticks was abroad in the street, wielded by no one and yet engaged in a furious orgy of sweeping. The noise bordered upon cacophonous as bristles scraped ruthlessly over paving stones and pathways and walls, removing every speck of accumulated dirt and dust. Ragged shreds of cloth applied themselves to leaded window panes, buffing them up to a renewed shine. Greenish water drained slowly from collected puddles, and buckets of fresher, soapy water emptied themselves into the spaces they left behind, the brooms rushing in to scrub away the stains left by filth and algae.

The air freshened slowly as we watched, the aromas of stagnation fading in favour of wafting, floral fragrances.

I kept my shield up and sturdy, in case any of the household implements should take exception to our entrance and attempt to attack us. They did not. We went ignored as they completed their furious spring-cleaning, those that approached routing smoothly around us with the apparent ease of long practice.

After, perhaps, ten minutes of this, a bell tinkled brightly somewhere and this seemed to be a signal, for the broomsticks and cloths, buckets and brushes, all vanished with a concerted pop.

I thought, apropos of nothing and with a brief pang, of Alban. What a pity he had missed the broomstick ballet.

‘How do we get this at home?’ said Jay, who had come up next to me some minutes before.

‘We’ve a lesser version of it at Home already,’ I said. ‘Much lesser, and more discreet. I can’t imagine the kind of power it would take to operate the Sweeping Symphony on so large a scale.’

‘And who’s running it, anyway?’ said Rob. ‘Any symphony needs a conductor.’

‘Do you think someone is still alive out here?’ I said, thinking of Baroness Tremayne, the… shade, I suppose, of a former courtier I’d met on our previous visit. But no, she was not technically alive. Not technically dead, either, but hers was a shadowed existence. She was, surely, too distant from the material world to much affect it. That was how she’d managed to survive at all.

‘It’s hard to see how,’ said Rob, with which opinion I had to agree. Even if somebody non-troll had lingered in Farringale after the fall, and successfully avoided the ortherex, how could they survive so long here? Why would anyone try? There was nothing left — no food, no trade, no links with the outside world at all.

No, there had to be another explanation.

‘I suppose this answers your question about the corpses of the fallen,’ I said to Jay. ‘They were, um, tidied away.’

‘How efficient,’ he answered. ‘I wonder if the Symphony always had that function.’

‘Or if somebody added it in later, as need arose? Perhaps.’

Indira had the strained look of a young woman trying her damnedest to commit a wealth of information to memory. She was probably brilliant enough to figure out its workings at a glance. By next week, the Sweepers at Home might be receiving a significant upgrade.

‘There was a pattern to their movements,’ she suddenly said. ‘They weren’t as random as they seemed. It was fully choreographed.’

That interested me. ‘Could something so complicated survive indefinitely without direct oversight?’

‘Not easily,’ she said, and I caught the scholar’s gleam sparking in her dark eyes. It’s that rabid fervour some of us get when presented with a mystery. She had to find the answer. ‘There would have to be a strong anchor somewhere, something with a powerful and renewing source of magick. Probably with a web of smaller anchors across the city…’ her slender hands sketched a rapid grid-shape in the air, and she drifted away towards the nearest building, eyes alight.

‘Indira,’ I called, not without a certain reluctance. ‘Now’s not the time. Dangers, remember?’

Not that we had seen hide nor hair of any so far. The broomsticks were indifferent to us, and though the twilight-blue heavens roiled with snowy and golden clouds and crackled with lightning, as they had before, no griffin had swooped out of the skies to destroy us.

Nonetheless, I may be Ves but I am not that reckless.

‘Right,’ said Indira and drifted back, with only one, lingering look of regret at the pale brick structure she’d been heading for.

‘I’d like to find that anchor,’ said Rob.

‘And whatever source it’s drawing from,’ added Jay.

‘Seconded upon both counts,’ I said. ‘I’d also like to see what Goodie makes of this place.’

‘Goodie?’ echoed Indira.

‘Goodie Goodfellow, AKA Robin, AKA Pup.’ I hauled her out of the satchel as I spoke, ignoring her little grunt of protest — honestly, has there ever been a creature more addicted to slumber? — and set her down. ‘Goodie,’ I said in my stern voice. ‘We need your help. Find interesting stuff, but — and this is important — no running away. Understood?’

Ms. Goodfellow’s nose was already glued to the ground by the time I’d made it through half of this speech, and she took off at a rolling trundle, tail wagging. I was left to hope that the main gist of my instructions had got through to her somehow.

‘Not to mention,’ I said as I set off after her, ‘the library. Post-haste.’

‘Seconded,’ said Mauf from the vicinity of my shoulder bag.

‘Haven’t you spent enough time on those shelves already?’ This was inaccurate, of course; I sometimes forgot he was only identical to Bill the Book, not actually Bill. But since he was a copy, and possessed all of Bill’s knowledge, it amounted to much the same thing. Right?

‘I am over familiar with some portion of the library,’ said Mauf, ‘and I trust you will not be disposed to leave me there. But I anticipate an exploration of the rest of my colleagues with great eagerness.’

His colleagues, I supposed, were books. I anticipated the same myself, most eagerly.

‘Then let’s start there,’ I suggested, and called to the pup, who largely ignored me.

As I unfolded Alban’s map of the city and tore off in the direction of the library — a place which had, I freely admit, haunted my dreams for weeks — I was too aware of the swarming infestation of ortherex parasites heaving and churning somewhere beneath my feet. While I knew they posed little threat to me or my present companions, their presence added nothing to my comfort. Apart from anything, they looked repulsive, and that, however unfairly, is often enough to incite disgust. Just think of how unpopular spiders are, even the ones that can cause no harm whatsoever.

And then, the fact that they’d apparently eaten an entire city did little to endear them to me.

I tried not to think about them, other than to keep some of our driving questions at the forefront of my thoughts: what had brought them here? How and why had they stayed?

‘Ves,’ Jay called, interrupting my thoughts.

‘Mm?’ I looked up, and was treated to a view of an unfamiliar street. Human-sized dwellings predominated there, most of them built from a mixture of reddish brick and timber: I’d wandered into a row of merchant’s houses, I judged, or something like that.

Which was lovely, but not exactly to the point.

Do you know, I reckon this is why I can find nothing and nowhere. I might set off in the right direction, but then my mind wanders and I stop paying attention to where I am, where I’ve been, and where I’m supposed to be going.

Sheepishly, I retraced my steps and handed the map to someone with less of a fatal tendency to daydream, otherwise known as Jay.

He was kind enough not to rib me about it this time, or maybe he was just too focused on the mission. Like I was supposed to be.

I sighed.

He got us to the library steps within minutes. I trotted along with my shields up and my head in the clouds; Rob kept wary eyes on the velvety, lightning-laced sky; Indira moved like a woman on a mission, exhibiting all the laser-like focus I wish I had.

‘Stop,’ said Jay as we mounted the steps. ‘Something’s different here.’

Perhaps it was no surprise that it was me who noticed it first. ‘Colours,’ I said, elegantly terse — or fatuously unhelpful, depending on your point of view. I gestured at the long, long windows set into the front of the soaring, white-stone building before us. They were filled in with leaded lights: many small, diamond-shaped panes of glass fitted edge-to-edge. Previously the glass had been clear. Now, they were a wash of dazzling, rainbow colour through which a soft light shone. ‘I’d swear these weren’t stained glass before.’

‘Or lit up like a Christmas tree,’ said Jay.

Indira, to my confusion, squatted down right there in the street and laid a palm against one pale stone slab. ‘These are warm,’ she said thoughtfully.

‘Is that significant?’ I wasn’t catching her drift.

‘Might be.’ She paused there in thought for a moment, then rose gracefully and re-joined us.

I noticed that Rob had drawn his lovely, terrifying silvered knives.

I also noticed that Ms. Goodfellow seemed to be having a very good time, though I could not determine why. Always a bundle of energy (except when comatose), she’d begun running in circles, a frenzy in miniature, her ears and tail flying. ‘Pause,’ I said to her, and scooped her up. Retrieving my hair-changing ring from her horn again (how did she keep doing that?), I gave her a swift sanity check.

She stared up at me with liquid eyes, tongue lolling in a canine grin.

‘You’re mad,’ I told her. ‘But I suppose that’s not so unusual.’

Jay had, cautiously, approached the main doors of the library, which opened to welcome him. The moment I set the pup down, she shot inside, yapping.

‘We should be careful—’ Rob was saying. He broke off with a sigh. ‘Okay, we can do it that way.’ He went after her, a silvery knife glinting in one fist and the Lapis Wand in the other.

Jay, Indira and I followed.

Something had changed inside, too. The air thrummed, a sound I might have connected with something like a central heating system if we weren’t standing in a building that far predated such modern conceits. What’s more, something was happening to the floor. I stepped out of my shoes, and soon saw what Indira had been talking about: the coloured tiles underfoot, which should have been cool, were toasty warm, and faintly pulsing.

I extracted my favourite book from his sleeping bag. ‘Mauf. You awake?’

‘Yes, madam.’

‘Did you ever experience anything like this before? Or your predecessor, I suppose. Did he? Any pertinent memories?’

‘I have not the pleasure of understanding you.’

‘The colours, the lights, the heat,’ I elaborated.

‘My predecessor (as you term him) having spent the greater part of three centuries blissfully insensate, I am afraid I can be of little assistance. The library certainly was not known to display such unseemly exuberance in those earlier days, when he found it possible to be awake.’ I detected a note of disdain. It was not the first time Mauf had displayed some little hostility towards the prototype of a book upon which he had been modelled.

‘Does Lady Tregawny say anything about such phenomenon?’ I hoped he’d had sufficient time to slurp up the contents of her memoirs by then.

‘Not a word.’

That might mean her ladyship’s memoirs predated these peculiarities, or it may mean merely that she had never had cause to discuss them. ‘Thanks,’ I remembered to say, my mind busy.

I went to stash him again, but he leapt in my hands and actually began to vibrate. ‘Wait! You promised.’

‘So I did. Come on, then.’ Avoiding the chamber nearest the main doors, from which spot Jay had originally snagged his predecessor, I followed Rob into a different chamber. This one was airy and light, a clear dome arcing over the ceiling. Spotless, of course; presumably the Sweeping Symphony had cleared away any dust that might previously have accumulated.

Mauf made a kittenish growl of pleasure. ‘Such erudition,’ he said dreamily.

‘Knock yourself out,’ I told him, and set him on a low table that stood between two towering bookcases. As yet, Pup had not re-materialised and I was becoming anxious about her. ‘Goodie?’ I called, uselessly. She probably did not yet understand that this dignified moniker was, approximately, her name.

But then the tick-tick of her claws upon the tiled floor alerted me to her approach, and she came bounding around a corner. She made for me at a flat run, hurtling headlong in my general direction, jaws fixed in a huge smile.

She had a jewelled scroll-case lodged between her teeth.

‘How lovely,’ I said, wincing as she collided with my legs. ‘Is it useful, Pup, or just pretty?’

‘Hey,’ said Jay from somewhere nearby. I couldn’t see him. ‘Some would argue that a thing may be both pretty and useful, no?’

I vaguely recognised one of my own maxims being repeated back to me there, and stuck out my tongue, forgetting that he could not see me either.

I wrestled the case from Goodie Goodfellow and tried to prise it open, but its ends were sealed fast and wouldn’t budge.

When, a moment later, a babble of voices abruptly cut through the prevailing quiet, coming from somewhere two or three rooms away, I mumbled a garbled curse and stuffed the case into my satchel. Jay was way ahead of me; I almost collided with him as I tore in the direction of the inexplicable tumult. Rob had gone that way.

We found him standing in the middle of a room I’d never seen before, a far larger chamber than the rest of the library. Its central hall, I surmised, for it had the cathedral-like height and splendid vaulting that might suit such an important spot. A smooth starstone floor stretched away into the near distance, inset with gilded curlicued ornaments, and — like the library at Mandridore — silvery puffs of cloud hung where the ceiling ought to be. There were fewer books here, and no actual bookcases. Instead, sections of the stone walls were covered over with glass, and behind the glass hung artefacts of, no doubt, unspeakable rarity and power. Most of them were great, gilt-edged tomes with ornate hinges, or — my heart sank a bit — scrolls in jewelled cases, awfully like the one the dear pup had just surrendered into my care.

The voices were coming from some of the books.

‘Giddy gods,’ I breathed. ‘More chatty tomes?’

‘I think,’ said Indira cautiously, ‘this is different.’

I saw her point. Unlike Mauf (or indeed Bill), who spoke like he had a mind stuffed somewhere into his bindings, these books were shrieking the same words over and over, like trained parrots. It burns us, it hurts us, take it away! yelled an otherwise sober-looking book in a black binding. We told you, we said so, we knew how it would be! repeated another, jauntier tome, flashing richly-coloured interior illuminations as it danced in agitation.

They weren’t all distressed, however. Lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely, sang a little jade-coloured book, and I developed an immediate desire to take it home with us. It’s time, it’s time, how we’ve missed it! chortled another.

A scroll in a ruby-studded jacket simply cackled without cease.

‘Farringale’s lunatic asylum for books?’ suggested Jay, backing away a step.

‘Are they mad?’ I mused. ‘Or just really pepped up?’

‘I’m not sure “pep” is a word I’d use,’ said Jay. ‘Except maybe for that one.’ He waved a hand at the giggling scroll.

I turned and left the cacophonic hallway at a run. ‘I think we’re going to need Mauf.’

Turn page ->

‘You want to do… what?’ said Milady, some twenty-four hours later.

‘Pop back into Farringale, ascertain the true cause of its infestation and consequent demise, mend it, divest it of its juiciest books by way of our well-earned reward, and be home in time for tea,’ I said smoothly.

‘Is the tea strictly vital to the mission?’

‘When have I ever been willing to miss tea?’

I chose to interpret Milady’s subsequent silence as either amusement or a hearty endorsement of the plan, and waited.

‘Ves,’ she said at last. ‘This is ambitious, even for you.’

‘What if I told you it was Jay’s plan?’

‘Hey,’ Jay objected. ‘My plan was to go into Farringale on a research and exploration mission. Scientific. Information gathering. That kind of thing.’

‘Right, sorry,’ I murmured. ‘I might have got a little carried away with the rest.’

‘If you find yourself with the means to restore the city then by all means use them,’ said Milady, with just a hint of sarcasm. ‘One suspects the situation might prove too complicated to mend by tea-time, however.’

When Milady starts referring to herself as “one”, she’s at maximum satire. ‘All right, we’ll take tea with us,’ I said sunnily.

The air sparkled. Definitely laughter; hopefully the nice kind. ‘May one ask what you are doing asking my permission?’ Milady continued.

Perhaps not the nice kind.

‘We’ll need Rob,’ I said. ‘And I’d like Indira, too.’

‘Wait, what?’ said Jay.

‘On the grounds that there’s little Team Patel can’t deal with,’ I went on, doggedly. ‘We’ll need the usual toys from Stores—’

‘Including that Sunstone Wand Ornelle has been complaining to me about?’ said Milady drily.

Since the object in question currently lay at the bottom of my satchel, with Ms. Goodfellow asleep on top of it, I smoothly let this pass. ‘And of course, we’ll need House to lend us the third key again.’

‘Ves,’ said Milady firmly. ‘Forgive me for pointing this out, but you would divest me of every single one of these advantages, without a word and without compunction, if you thought it necessary. So I ask you again: why are you asking my permission?’

‘Is it too much to believe that I’d like to do things by the book this time?’

‘Yes.’

Jay folded his arms and lifted his brows at me. The look said: Well. Go on.

So nice to have back-up.

‘Sneaking takes so much time and effort,’ I tried.

‘Undoubtedly, but Farringale has been lost for some four centuries already. It will await your kind, liberating efforts for another day or two.’

Unanswerable.

‘I miss Home,’ I said. I tried to sound nonchalant but I’m afraid the words came out in rather a small voice.

‘You what?’ said Milady. Even Jay looked a little surprised.

‘I miss Home,’ I said again. ‘I miss the Society. I miss my friends, and I miss you, even when you are witheringly sarcastic. I dislike being rogue and I want my family back.’ I paused. No one spoke. ‘Seeing as there’s no way the Ministry or anyone else could reasonably object to our assisting the Troll Court with a research expedition, I see no reason to go on playing the loose cannon while we do it.’

‘I see,’ said Milady, in something of a softened tone.

I avoided Jay’s eye while I awaited her verdict.

‘The matter of the fifth Britain is not yet resolved,’ she warned. ‘Not to mention whatever remains of the other seven. I had hoped to use the three of you to uncover more.’

‘You still can.’

‘Which cannot be done under the official aegis of the Society, for the Ministry is still being woefully stubborn upon that topic.’

My heart sank a little more with every syllable, but I tried not to let it show. ‘I understand,’ I said, which was true, though I didn’t like it.

‘However,’ said Milady. ‘The topic of Farringale is a loaded one. Its mythological status rivals that of Atlantis in some quarters. Were it to be widely known that we are launching an exploratory expedition, I fear we would be somewhat interfered with.’

My tension eased a fraction. ‘Most irritatingly,’ I agreed.

‘House, of course, is a related but separate entity and any choices made by her are little to do with me,’ she continued.

I was intrigued by this use of her to refer to the House. I don’t think I had ever heard Milady designate a gender before.

‘I will lend you Rob and Indira for one week, together with any supplies they should find it necessary to withdraw from Stores. You may not be aware, but Their Majesties of Mandridore recently communicated to me an urgent need for expert consultants in certain fields in which Rob and Indira excel. Naturally, we at The Society are always ready to assist the Court.’

I concealed a smile. ‘We’ll be very discreet,’ I promised. ‘Maximum sneaking.’

‘What’s more,’ said Milady, and the air glittered. ‘Tea will be provided.’

‘Typical Milady chicanery,’ I said to Jay half an hour later, as we sat waiting in a tiny back-parlour somewhere on the ground floor at Home. ‘If anyone asks inconvenient questions, she can simply blame the Court. And fairly enough. We are employed by them at present, after all, and they’ve got the might to out-manoeuvre the Ministry, if necessary.’

Jay slowly shook his head. ‘I may never get used to the double-speak.’

‘Give it time.’

‘Does she ever say no and, um, mean it?’

‘Frequently.’

‘Right.’

Confusion radiated off poor Jay, but one couldn’t explain these things.

We’d been sent down to the parlour to “wait”, officially, until Rob and Indira were ready to join us. Actually, we were hiding. The Society is full of wonderful, loyal people (I see no occasion to remember Miranda at this moment), but wherever there are people there will be gossip, and we did not want the grapevine ruining all our devious plans. Let them talk, if they would — after we’d got the goods.

I’d delivered a wish list to Rob, who’d promised to stop by Stores on his way down. I’d chosen him rather than Indira because, as charming as Jay’s sister could be (when she forgot to be shy), Rob had a way about him. I suspected Ornelle of being either a little afraid of his mildly forbidding air, or of harbouring a secret crush. The latter would hardly surprise me. Rob’s a good-looking man, with or without the greying hair, and underneath the grim exterior he’s marshmallow.

A few inches away from my feet, the floor bubbled. Considering that it was, in its entirety, paved with well-worn flagstones and carpeted with equally well-loved rugs, not a whole lot of bubbling should’ve been happening.

‘I think this is our key,’ I said to Jay.

We watched with spellbound fascination as a patch of stone a few inches wide buckled and boiled, belched bubbles into the air, and finally expelled a glittering key. I snatched it up. Its smooth silver, only slightly tarnished, was untouched by the churning goop, and its inset sapphire glowed.

‘Thank you,’ I said to House.

The floor settled back into its usual smooth, unbelching configuration.

I paused to consider. House could have simply put the key into my hand; what did the swampy-floor routine betoken? Did it — she — disapprove of our return into Farringale? She had helped us the last time, even without Milady’s concurrence. Now, it seemed, the situation was rather the reverse; Milady had persuaded, but House was not pleased.

‘Do you dislike the prospect, darling House?’ I said aloud. ‘Is it the possible restoration of the city that you dislike? Surely not.’

There came no reply, a silence I was unsure how to interpret.

‘It will only be opened again if it is no longer dangerous,’ I assured the building. ‘Any such outcome is likely to be some way off, if it is ever feasible.’

Silence.

‘You’re worried about Ves,’ said Jay suddenly. ‘You think she’s reckless.’

The floor belched loudly.

Did that mean Jay was right, or did it mean that House rained scorn upon the very notion that it might be concerned?

‘We aren’t trolls,’ I put in. ‘We should be safe enough from the ortherex.’ Even I had to wince at the unpromising word should in the middle of my sentence.

‘And we’re pretending the griffins don’t exist, just now,’ Jay added helpfully.

‘We survived them last time!’

‘So we did.’

I glowered at Jay. ‘It was your idea to go. Have you forgotten that?’

‘Nope.’ He smiled at me.

The floor belched out another bubble, this time rather nearer to Jay.

‘Too right,’ I said. ‘If we’re eaten by griffins, it is all Jay’s fault.’

‘In which case, if we save the city, that is my fault, too,’ said Jay.

‘Deal.’

Secretly I was proud of Jay. I was having a deliciously bad influence on him.

‘Ornelle wants her Wand back,’ Rob told me when he finally showed up, a full hour later.

‘But it loves me.’

He grunted. ‘We all do, more’s the pity. Ornelle knows she stands zero chance.’ He was offloading objects into my welcoming arms as he spoke: some of Orlando’s sleep capsules (they’re my style, all right?); a few bottomless phials filled with various restoratives; an emergency porridge-pot (I know, I know. Porridge isn’t my favourite food for the road either, but one takes what one can get and a steady diet of gruel is at least way better than gnawing hunger); and one of those scroll-and-quill combos I may have mentioned before. Val had the other one. If our phones should fail while we were out there, I didn’t want to be totally incommunicado.

Jay received a Wand of his own: the Ruby, very flashy. I gazed long upon it.

‘Stop it,’ said Rob. ‘You’ve already purloined one of the best Wands we’ve got.’

I cast him a sheepish smile, and tried my best to put a lid on my covetousness as he handed a beautiful Wand to Indira. It looked, to my experienced eye, like the Spinel: clear purple with a pinkish shimmer.

‘Thank you both for coming along,’ I said, with a smile especially for Indira. She, as always, said little, and besides offering a shy smile back, stood waiting in patient immobility. I was surprised to see that her broken arm was fully mended already. She’d been benefiting from some of Rob’s more potent healing enchantments.

Rob was senior enough to have his own Wand on permanent assignment, of course. He’d been wielding the Lapis Lazuli beauty for years. He generally wore it strapped to the inside of his arm, right alongside those deadly charmed knives of his.

I did a quick supply survey. Shiny toys from Stores: check. Alban’s map of Farringale City: check. Lady Tregawny’s Recollections of a Lost Age: A Courtier’s Memories of Farringale, purloined from Mandridore Library: check. Talkative, well-informed book named Mauf: check.

Jay, Rob, Indira and Ms. Goodfellow: check checkity check.

Me. Emphatic check.

‘Ready for adventure, danger and glory?’ I said, hefting my shoulder bag.

‘Lead on,’ said Rob.

‘Onward,’ said Jay.

Indira nodded emphatically.

‘Right, then.’

Off we went.

It felt like old times as we trooped down to the Waypoint in the cellar, a Society team once more. I hated a bit that I could say things like feels like old times about such a subject, and after only a few weeks of supposed independence, but I put that aside.

The journey proceeded much as before. Jay whisked us down to the Winchester area the quick-and-speedy way. I was pleased to note that my nausea was lessening with every Way-journey; either I was becoming a better Traveller of the Ways, or practice was improving Jay’s technique as Waymaster. Either way, I arrived in a Winchester field with my dignity intact and my spirits high.

After that, it was my turn. I fished up my syrinx pipes. (Will it surprise you to learn that I wasn’t really, technically, allowed to keep them? Their coming into my possession at all was more by accident than design, and there were those who’d objected strenuously to so rare and powerful a Treasure falling into such untested hands as mine were at the time. Milady made sure I got to keep them. I’m still not sure why).

Addie and Friends made excellent time, as is their wont. We swooped through the skies, wafted elegantly by unicorn wings, and landed near the bridge over the River Alre within half an hour. It was only mid-morning and the day stretched ahead of us, bright with possibility even if it was raining a bit.

I was soon grateful for my decision to request Indira.

‘I am too short,’ I said with chagrin, standing beneath the high-arching bridge with three keys in my hand and no way of reaching the trio of alcoves into which they needed to be set. Last time, we’d had Alban with us, who was plenty tall enough for the job. This time, our tall folk included only Rob and Jay, neither of whom had sufficient inches.

Indira subjected the bridge to one of her swift, keen looks, swept the keys out of my hands, and rose smoothly into the air by a distance of several feet. She levitated with the grace of a gazelle, while I (despite my aptitude with the flying chair trick) do so with all the elegance of an exuberant young bullock. What’s more, she could hold herself perfectly steady, the better to manipulate the tricky keys-and-alcoves combinations. Naturally, she needed no help discerning which key went where. Within minutes she had all three inset, and red, green and blue lights blazed over the bridge.

‘Right,’ said Rob as a door lit up in the ageing brick, and swung slowly inward. ‘Ves and me first. Shield, please, Ves. Make it a good one.’

I don’t fly well, but I do Ward. I shrouded us both in a tough shield charm, tuned to repel (hopefully) just about anything we might imminently encounter: poison, fire, lightning, physical attacks, incoming curses, hexes or other magickal unpleasantries, and more. It hadn’t the faintest chance of repelling a serious griffin attack, of course, but one does one’s little best.

In we went.

Last time we had ventured into Farringale, we’d found an empty but eerily tidy city, marred by scattered pools of stagnant water but otherwise largely intact. It had been utterly silent, of course, that heavy silence one finds in long-abandoned spaces.

This time was different. This time, we walked into chaos.

Turn page ->

The library of Mandridore is to die for.

I mean that almost literally. I’m sure I felt my heart stop when we walked in.

Tall people need a tall library, yes? This one soared up and up and up, to such a height there were wisps of cloud drifting near the ceiling. If there was a ceiling. No word of a lie, there really were, though I don’t suppose they ever took it upon themselves to rain. Every inch of every wall was covered in shelves housing perfectly-ordered rows of books. I looked for the traditional long ladders winding up the bookcases, but of these there was no sign. I did, however, spot a large tome floating at a leisurely pace down from a distant shelf. At Mandridore, one did not travel to the books; the books travelled to you.

I could get used to such a place.

‘When I die,’ I heard Mauf say from inside my satchel, ‘bury me here.’

I hoped he was busy soaking up whatever he could get his filthy book-mitts upon.

A dash of magick kept the light levels on the muted side, the better to protect the collections. This lent the library’s several chambers a peaceful, serene air which could not but please. I’d walked in and felt immediately at ease.

Unfortunately, things did not go nearly so well as this auspicious beginning suggested.

While Jay wandered off to browse, drawn like a magnet to a floor-level shelf crowded with enormous leather-bound volumes, I went with Alban to the grand mahogany desk behind which sat the librarian on duty. A large, handsome woman of middle age, she became flustered at Alban’s approach, and dropped a brief curtsey. Some subtle change to Alban’s expression told me he did not welcome this deference.

‘Dame Hellenna, I wonder if you could help us,’ he said, with an approximation of his usual smile. ‘We are interested in anything you can find on the topic of Torvaston the Second. Periods of particular interest include directly before, and any time after, the fall of Farringale.’

I did not at all see why, but something about this request made Dame Hellenna nervous. She glanced uncertainly at me, then made for the bookshelves with the air of a woman running away.

A slight frown creased Alban’s brow.

The jumpy librarian soon returned. ‘I— I’m afraid there are no books available on those topics, sir,’ she said, not meeting his eye.

‘None?’ repeated Alban blankly.

Dame Hellenna shook her head.

‘How can that be? King Torvaston founded this Court!’

The librarian began to look most unhappy. ‘I quite see your point, sir, but nonetheless…’

‘You’re telling me,’ said Alban with forced calm, ‘that no one has written of Mandridore’s founders in nearly four centuries?’

‘If they have, sir, their books are not kept here.’

‘That is impossible. There must be something.’

I laid a hand on Alban’s arm, for he seemed to be working himself into a froth. ‘Forgive me,’ I said to Dame Hellenna, ‘but were there any books on those topics, at any time in the past?’

Her eyes got a bit shifty. ‘I… couldn’t say, madam.’

Uh huh.

Alban was all over that like a rash. ‘So there aren’t now but that hasn’t always been the case. When were they removed, and by whose order?’

‘They— I don’t— I don’t precisely know, sir, but…’ She glanced about, as though she might be overheard, though no one was nearby save for myself. ‘I know of no specific removal of those books, but there are records of a general purge undertaken some years ago, by order of your highness’s mother’s esteemed father.’

It took me a moment to parse that. The queen’s dad, or Alban’s adoptive grandfather. Got it.

‘The library was overfull, of course, though so it always is…’

‘How many books were taken out?’ said Alban crisply.

‘The records suggest a great many, sir, though few titles are listed by name.’

‘When was this?’

‘More than fifty years ago.’

Well, well. Interesting. A spot of spring-cleaning would make a good cover for the removal of a few inconvenient books, though I failed to see why a former royal would have wanted to. What had he found out about Torvaston?

Did Alban’s mother know?

I could see similar questions echoing through Alban’s thoughts, for he’d developed a grim demeanour, and a note of worry lurked in his eyes.

Dame Hellenna appeared to be suffering some second thoughts. ‘I… beg your highness will not inform the queen of my comments, sir. My job—’

‘I need not mention your name,’ Alban said, in a fractionally softened tone. ‘Thank you for your help, Hellenna.’

Upon which words we turned away, leaving poor Dame Hellenna to recover her poise.

Jay was happily installed at a table with a stack of no fewer than eight gigantic tomes beside him. They were too big for the table, so he’d piled them up on the floor beside him. The heap was half as tall as I was.

‘I’m sorry to interrupt your book party,’ I said, with more sincerity than probably appeared, for he did look happy. ‘We have hit a snag.’ I told him about the Torvaston problem.

Jay regarded Alban thoughtfully. ‘So his highness is off to lay the smack down on her majesty?’

‘Something like that.’

‘While he’s doing that.’ Jay turned a page the size of a small sail, and the word Farringale caught my eye. An exquisitely detailed drawing depicted a block of several rooms, gathered together like a honeycomb. After a moment, the penny dropped: Farringale’s library. This must be where Alban had copied his hand-drawn map from. Jay looked up at me. ‘We could trawl from library to library looking for lost books, but it seems to me there’s only one place we can be sure of discovering the truth.’

‘You want to go back to Farringale?’

‘Don’t you?’

No. Yes. I did, sort of? And at the same time I really didn’t. I’d suspected, since the beginning, that our going there was precisely what Their Majesties had in mind when they’d summoned us to the Court. ‘I don’t want to do it alone,’ I said. ‘Nor can we, really, since we’ll need House’s help if we want the third key back.’

‘Do you think Milady will agree to partnering with the Court on this? She was against our ever going there in the first place.’

‘True,’ I conceded. ‘But since we came out alive, and with some highly interesting books in tow, I’ve some hopes she might have changed her mind.’

‘Right. We can’t take the baron this time, though.’ Jay sat back in his chair, and glanced perfunctorily at Alban. ‘Sorry, I mean the prince.’

Alban’s brow went up.

‘Too dangerous for you,’ said Jay. ‘We could have stayed longer the last time, if we hadn’t had to evacuate you.’

‘There is now a cure,’ Alban pointed out, presumably referring to the condition of ortherex… infestation, or whichever charming term by which one might discuss that disease.

‘Which has never been tested in Farringale,’ I pointed out. ‘As danger zones go, that place is code red. And you’re the crown prince, for heaven’s sake. I can’t believe Their Majesties let you go in the first place.’

Alban busied himself adjusting the cuff of his left sleeve. I received the impression he was avoiding my eye.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You didn’t ask them.’

‘I had their authority in the same way that you had Milady’s.’

‘Touché.’

‘You found nothing?’ said Queen Ysurra perhaps half an hour later. Alban had escorted us back to Their Majesties’ manor, but not to the Topaz Parlour. The queen sat, surprisingly, in the kitchen, sorting an array of dried flowers across the top of an aged, much-scrubbed oak table. There was no sign of the king.

‘Not precisely nothing,’ I said placatingly. I was perched atop a stool on the other side of the table, with a glass of clear, cold water before me. I was more disconcerted than encouraged by this peculiar simplicity. I’d only just begun to get used to all the pomp and gilding. ‘The ortherex simply aren’t such a problem in the fifth Britain. They are viewed as pests, like rats. Which means, the conditions which led to their total overrun of old Farringale may well be unique. So. If we can find out precisely what those conditions are, and how the parasites came to proliferate so excessively, then perhaps we can reverse those changes. If we can, the ortherex will die out.’

‘Which they should have, already,’ said Jay. ‘There are no trolls left alive there, and nothing but raw magick for the creatures to eat. That makes no sense. We can’t find an answer to these mysteries in another world; Melmidoc had no idea what we were talking about, and Whitmore’s library had nothing. We need to go deep into Farringale itself, and take a look with our own eyes.’

Queen Ysurra carefully crumbled desiccated lavender into a bowl, wafting pungent aromas everywhere. I took a deep, grateful inhalation. I’ve always found it a relaxing scent, and perhaps so did Her Majesty. ‘I cannot deny that I had hoped for just such a venture in time,’ she said, after a moment’s thought. ‘But not in so ill-prepared a fashion. What do you propose to do?’

‘We would like the Court to partner with the Society,’ I said. ‘Jay and I will spearhead this mission, but we would like our own allies with us. And we’d like to do it with your blessing, and Milady’s — not least because we’ll need every resource either organisation can put at our disposal.’

Queen Ysurra’s gaze went to Alban.

‘We won’t be taking Alban with us,’ I said quickly. ‘Not into such danger.’

That apparently wasn’t what was on her mind. ‘Do you really think my father knew something about this?’ she said in a low voice.

‘It looks that way,’ said Alban softly. ‘It does seem that he was hiding something about Torvaston.’

The queen looked, suddenly, haggard, and I remembered what Alban had said about her health. She sagged over the table top, weary beyond even her advanced years.  ‘We had no thought, when we began with this ill-fated idea, that there could be any scandal attached.’

I began to feel afraid that she might refuse us. ‘Our promise, your majesty,’ I said firmly. ‘We are well used to keeping secrets. It is to be hoped we will find nothing to the detriment of your family, but if we do… provided it endangers no one, we undertake to keep it to ourselves. This I can promise on behalf of the Society as a whole.’

I suppose so conditional a promise was not as reassuring as Ysurra might have liked, but she sighed, and gave me a nod. ‘I cannot prevent your going. Not when Naldran and I opened this can of worms ourselves. But I beg you to be… careful.’

A host of different warnings could be read into those words. Careful of what? Everything? Everything. It was, after all, a dangerous place. Ortherex might be dangerous mostly to trolls, but we did not absolutely know that they wouldn’t attack us. There were griffins, too, and that was just scratching the surface. What if we were right, and it was magick-flooded? What else might we find when we lingered in those ruined halls?

My stomach fluttering with a mix of excitement and fear, I stood up and gave Her Majesty my best curtsey. ‘With your leave, majesty, we’ll get going immediately. No time like the present.’

Queen Ysurra just looked at me, and her face was grey. ‘Thank you, Miss Vesper,’ she said. ‘Mr. Patel. Alban will see that you receive everything you need.’

‘A couple of keys to Farringale, for a start,’ I said. ‘The third one’s our problem.’

Turn page ->

I couldn’t leave Whitmore again without checking on Zareen. So while Jay went off to coax Millie into an imminent departure and the baro— prince — went to consult with Melmidoc, I made my way down onto the wide beach beneath the Whitmore cliff where Ashdown Castle had settled itself. The poor old place looked the worse for wear. It was too ancient, too delicate and too run-down to be dragged the length and breadth of Britain and beyond; a part of its roof had caved in during the journey (to Val’s cost), and, robbed of the foundations it was used to, it had… shifted, in places. The effect was a general sagging, as of a crestfallen building enjoying a lengthy sulk.

I felt rather sorry for it. You’d think Fenella would be more careful with her family’s ancestral home.

Inside, the air was much colder than the sun-drenched outdoors. That’s the way with old buildings: all that brick and stone and none of the insulation, double-glazing and so on that characterises more modern structures. But there was something unearthly about the chill in the great, shadowy hall, and I moved with caution. Last time I had set foot in there, the walls had been weeping great, salt tears. The ten or so enslaved Waymasters who’d moved the place had not been at all happy about it.

Was Zareen even still there? I wandered down a corridor or two, feeling like the only moving object for about twelve miles. The castle had the hushed, too-still air of total desertion. ‘Zar?’ I called, though not very loudly. I had the irrational feeling that a loud noise might bring the rest of the roof down.

Miranda popped into my thoughts. I’d last seen her somewhere in these castle halls, too. She couldn’t still be here — surely she had been dispatched back to our own Britain with the rest of her new colleagues. But when I came to consider the idea, I found I was not entirely sure. Distracted, exhausted and confused, I hadn’t thought to make certain that she was among the throng we had crammed into Millie’s parlours a few days before. ‘Mir?’ I called.

No response. My footsteps made discouraging dull, ringing sounds on the tiled floors, and the echoes they sent up told me clearly enough that I was alone.

Which is why I nearly died of fright when a voice abruptly screamed: ‘Is someone there?’

‘Argh!’ I said, and fell against the nearest wall. I regretted this at once, for it oozed a freezing chill which went straight to my bones. I hurriedly leapt away again. ‘Er. It’s only me,’ I said, squinting into the pervasive gloom. I saw no one. ‘Ves of the Society. No threat to you whatsoever.’

‘You should not be here,’ said the voice. ‘The ghost witch promised no one would come in.’

Ghost witch? ‘You mean Zareen?’

‘Yes.’

‘I came to visit the ghost witch. I’m a friend. Do you know where she is?’

‘She is engaged at present and cannot receive visitors.’

‘You mean she isn’t here?’

‘Oh, she is,’ said the disembodied voice, a note of disgust creeping in. ‘She is busy. With the man.’

I was not altogether surprised to hear that George Mercer was not making himself popular. ‘Can you tell me where she is?’ I persevered.

‘Northwest tower,’ the voice snapped.

‘Ah. And where is—’

‘Up the stairs.’

My enquiries for more specific directions went unanswered, so with a sigh I toiled up the first flight of stairs I came to, their simple design and shabby state informing me that I had wandered into the servants’ quarters. I toddled down passages uncounted, through drawing-rooms and bedchambers and parlours, aided only by an occasional snappish interjection from my bad-tempered guide: ‘Not that way. The other door!’ At length, a promisingly spiralling stairwell together with the low murmur of voices (hopefully the living variety) told me I had come to the right place.

Pausing near the top of the stairs, I called: ‘Zar?’

The murmuring stopped.

‘I hope you’re Ves,’ came Zareen’s voice.

‘What if I’m not?’

‘George will blast you out of existence.’

‘I don’t see why I have to be obliterated by George, of all people. That’s just adding insult to injury. Can’t you do it?’

The rickety oak door creaked open, and Zareen appeared. She was not wearing a great deal.

Neither, I soon had occasion to note, was George.

I gave a cough. ‘Everything’s going well then, hm?’

‘Some things,’ Zareen corrected. ‘Some things are going well.’

George, lounging in a threadbare chair near the window, scowled at me, a greeting I returned with similarly warm feelings. I’d learned enough about Zareen’s past to excuse her lingering infatuation with George — if that’s what it was — but that didn’t mean I had to like the man myself.

‘What are you doing back here?’ Zareen said. ‘I didn’t think we’d be seeing you for a while.’

‘On a royal mission.’ I grinned.

‘Troll Court?’

‘How’d you know?’

‘Wild guess: has to be something to do with that smooth talker of a baron.’

I toyed with the idea of enlightening Zareen on the point of the smooth-talker’s identity (and marital status), but decided against it. Not with George hanging around. We could have that conversation later.

I also couldn’t tell her much about the mission, though her lack of questions suggested she knew that. ‘Do you two need anything?’ I asked instead.

‘Nope, we’re good.’

‘Righto. And how’s Operation Ashdown progressing? I gather George is killing it with the locals.’

‘So you met Harriet.’

‘If she’s the snappish lady with the man-hating attitude, then yes.’

Zareen grinned at George, who rolled his eyes. ‘Harriet Theale, vicar’s wife. She has ideas about propriety. I’m afraid our modern attitudes aren’t working for her at all.’

‘How sisterly of her to blame George instead of you.’

‘It’s only fair. Normally the girls get all the blame. Ves, I should tell you: we’re not bringing Ashdown home.’

Unexpected. ‘What?’ I said, my brows going up.

‘You’ve seen the state of it, no? I don’t believe it can bear another cross-world hop. Nor should it be expected to. We’re looking instead for a better, permanent home for it out here on the fifth. Obviously it can’t stay on the beach.’

‘You don’t think Fenella will want it back?’

‘I dare say she will, but that’s tough. She shouldn’t have used it like a bus service in the first place. Once the Waymasters here have had time to recover, we’ll coach them through one final removal, get the castle set down somewhere more stable, and then let them go.’

‘They won’t want to go back to their own Britain?’

‘You’re full of discouraging questions, Ves.’

‘Sorry.’

Zareen shrugged. ‘That’s a bridge we’ll cross when we get there. Any that want to go home… well, I’m hoping Melmidoc might be able to help, either way.’

He might, at that. Perhaps he could get some of them settled in their own houses. After all, Whitmore seemed to make rather a habit of it.

George was, as usual, silent. Was it just that he hated me, or was he taciturn by nature? Presumably he was more forthcoming with Zareen. ‘Thank you for sticking with Zar,’ I said to him. ‘She’s important to us.’

‘And to me.’ Three ungracious words.

I gave up.

‘Right, leaving,’ I said. ‘One thing, though. Have you seen Miranda about?’

‘Didn’t she get shipped back to the sixth with the rest?’

‘I think so, and at the same time I don’t think so.’

‘We haven’t seen her.’

‘Roger.’ Perhaps it was thinking of Miranda that led to my saluting Zareen. ‘Vesper out. Take care out here, hm?’

‘We’re okay. You go impress the socks off the troll king.’

‘Actually, I get the impression the queen rules the roost there.’

‘As it should be.’

I arrived at Millie’s farmhouse to find Alban and Jay both there before me. Millie’s front door hung open; I sauntered in. A delicate melody wafted through the rooms, emanating, I supposed, from Millie’s old spinet. But it was not Millie playing it; it was Jay.

I regarded him in silence for a moment, enjoying the sheer beauty of the music he played. I’d rarely heard anything like it before. Indeed, had I ever? The music floated and danced, like… like faerie bells, I wanted to say, though stifled the thought as too fanciful by half.

‘Did I know you could play?’ I said, when Jay’s fingers stilled upon the keys.

He jumped, and gave me a startled glance over his shoulder. ‘Hi Ves.’

‘That was beautiful.’

He didn’t answer, but he did smile. ‘Alban’s upstairs,’ he said. ‘Are you ready to go?’

‘Yes. What’s he doing upstairs?’

‘Hiding from me.’

‘Uh huh. And why does he need to hide from you?’

‘We might have had words.’

‘I hope it was nothing to do with me.’

Jay’s silence spoke volumes.

All right, so Jay was still angry with Alban for flirting with me when he shouldn’t have. Why? Did I seem broken-hearted? I didn’t think I was. Absolutely not. Not even disappointed, really. Not a bit.

I went upstairs.

Alban sat tucked into the embrace of a pretty window seat in the homely drawing-room, one of its few pretences at elegance. He was too big for it, but had curled himself into it anyway with splendid disregard for proportion. Staring, no doubt moodily, out of the window, he did not turn when I came in.

I was swiftly growing tired of talking to people’s backs. ‘What did Melmidoc have to say about our theory?’ I asked without preamble.

‘He thinks it insane.’

‘Excellent.’

‘He might be right. No Court would exile its own king, and no exiled king would go in search of precisely the same dangerous environment he had just fled from. But then, Melmidoc does have a grudge or two against the Troll Court. His opinion is hardly clear-sighted.’

‘I say we proceed.’

‘Seconded. I can’t think of a better idea.’

‘Does he know of a way to, uh, drain magick from a flooded Dell?’

‘No. Says it’s never been done anywhere, to his knowledge.’

‘I suppose no one’s had reason enough to brave the dangers.’

He nodded without answering, and finally looked at me. It seemed to cost him an effort. ‘He’s right, of course.’

‘Melmidoc?’

‘Jay. I’ve been a selfish dick.’

‘Were those Jay’s words?’

‘I paraphrase.’

I felt the beginnings of a headache coming on. ‘Jay has no right to attack you for it,’ I said briskly. ‘I believe I can understand the difficulties of your predicament. And I don’t need to be protected from you or anybody else.’

‘So you aren’t hurt?’

‘No.’ I said it stoutly, without a trace of doubt, and met Alban’s eyes squarely when he looked at me.

He held my gaze for a moment, then nodded and looked away. ‘That is good to know.’

His tone suggested he’d drawn all manner of conclusions from that single word, some of which may or may not be hurtful, and some of which may or may not be true. But I didn’t have time to deal with it just then. Trailing from Zareen and George in dishabille, to an indignant Jay, to a sulking Alban, I felt like a nanny with a large and fractious brood to manage. ‘We’d better go, hadn’t we?’

It is awfully romantic, Millie broke in. Like a fairy tale. Shall you marry the prince in the end, Miss Vesper? I do hope so!

If I’d tried to come up with the quickest way to make the scene even more painfully awkward, I couldn’t have done a better job. ‘Thanks, Millie,’ I said with a sigh.

I judged it best to beat a hasty retreat.

I like her, I heard Millie say before I had made it out of earshot.

And Alban said, softly, ‘Me too.’

Turn page ->

How it seems to work with storytellers is: they arrive, noisily. People among the quickly-gathering crowd begin shouting out requests for stories. The tale-bearers pick whichever suggestion best suits their fancy and, for a little while, the drums stop in favour of their voices. Jay, Alban and I watched for a little while, taking their measure, and heard a spirited tale of an ancient hero called Gostingot who stormed the strongholds of corrupt sorcerers an unspecified number of centuries ago. The storytellers were good: he with his great, rumbling, booming voice and she with her light, musical tones, they had everything.

Once Gostingot’s tale was done, the giant resumed his drumming and off they went again, collecting more of an audience, until somebody’s called-out suggestion caught their attention once more.

‘This is going to take way too long,’ I said, sotto voce.

‘Right,’ said Jay. ‘It’ll have to be kidnapping, then.’

I stared. ‘What?’

‘That is what you were going to suggest, isn’t it?’

‘Nothing quite so daring—’

‘You disappoint me. Crazy Ves is becoming positively staid.’

I punched him. But only a little bit, on the arm.

I was actually looking at Alban.

‘What?’ said his highness, eyeing me back warily. ‘I don’t like that look in your eye, Ves.’

‘We want tales of displaced royalty, don’t we? How lucky that we happen to have a displaced royal right in our very midst. And from the same source, too!’ I gave him an encouraging smile.

He sighed. ‘So I am to be sacrificed for the sake of today’s mission, am I?’

‘Only your dignity.’

‘That’s reassuring.’

A short while later, a twitch or two of my intensely magickal Sunstone Wand had pepped up the prince’s appearance. His simple, stylish attire now resembled something far grander: he had velvets and silks, a fine, billowing cape, and a golden coronet.

‘Lose the crown, Ves,’ said Alban from between gritted teeth.

‘It is a bit too much,’ Jay agreed, surveying the prince critically.

I pouted a bit, for it made a splendid addition to his bronze-blond locks, but I obeyed.

‘And I’m not sure about the cape,’ Alban added, twisting around to look at the length of it swirling behind himself. ‘Must it billow like that?’

I’d given him the magickal equivalent of a wind machine. ‘Of course it must. We want pomp, we want majesty, we want hints of unearthly powers from afar. We need these people to take you seriously.’

‘That last part is sort of what I was getting at with the billowing thing.’

‘If this were a film, you’d have all that plus a mantle of palpable power, crackling around your muscled frame like a lightning storm—’

‘Please don’t give yourself ideas, Ves.’ He rolled his shoulders, stood a bit straighter, and sighed. ‘Just don’t let anybody trip on it, all right?’

‘Will watch like a hawk,’ I promised, probably mendaciously. I was given an immediate opportunity to prove myself, however, for Ms. Goodfellow made a sudden lunge at the cape’s floating ends and closed her teeth around the half-corporeal fabric. I bonked her on the nose with the Wand and she sneezed in surprise, releasing the cape at once.

‘You’re up,’ I told Alban, and nodded in the direction of the storytellers. We had ducked into a side street as they had paused again for another tale, and by the looks of it the story was winding down.

Alban closed his eyes briefly, opened them again for the pleasure of staring daggers at me, and then walked off.

‘He’s had practice at this,’ I murmured to Jay. We watched in momentary silence as our princely prince strode, with undeniable majesty and enviable grace, across the street and approached the storytellers’ audience. Somehow, that crowd parted for him like the sea; he did not even have to slow down. When he stopped, he was mere feet away from the giant and the sylph, and he seemed to my unbelieving eye to have grown a foot taller since he’d left us. Even the giant could not make him look small.

Jay and I hastily scuttled after.

‘I, Prince Alban of Mandridore,’ he was saying, ‘have come in search of answers to an age-old mystery. My noblest of ancestors, Torvaston the Second, is said once to have visited these shores. I would know the truth of these rumours.’ The fact that Alban was adopted and therefore no relation to Torvaston was quite by the by; I approved of his creative reinterpretation of the truth. He had a flare for it.

There followed some due flattering of the tale-bearers and their superior knowledge, wisdom, etc, most of which seemed to hit the mark. When he’d finished speaking, silence fell.

I noticed the giant’s merry eyes had travelled from Alban to Jay to me, and there was a twinkle of amusement discernible there.

‘I am sorry to tell your highness,’ he said in his deep, deep voice, ‘we know no tales of a Torvaston the Second.’

Alban appeared thrown by this, for when he opened his mouth nothing came out.

‘However,’ the giant went on, his smile broadening, ‘we do mayhap know a tale of another king of the trolls, who named himself Furgidan the Dispossessed.’

I knew the word furgidan. It meant “king” in Court Algatish, the language spoken upon more formal occasions at the Troll Courts. The Dispossessed King. That sounded about right.

‘A tale of tragedy, mystery, and adventure!’ the giant went on, addressing the crowd now. ‘And it takes place right here, upon your own Whitmore! Who shall hear it?’

Happily for us, the cheering that followed said everyone quite effectively.

‘Well, then,’ said the giant. ‘Some hundreds of years ago, the said Furgidan arrived with a royal entourage of more than thirty trolls, all members of his former court. Dukes and barons and marchionesses all, they caused quite the stir, for they were clad in finery rather like their descendent here,’ (Alban’s cape billowed obligingly at these words), ‘and they made the grandest of claims! “I am a king from afar,” said Furgidan, “from Farringale, on another shore.”

The sylph took up the tale. ‘I do not know that everyone believed him, for all knew of Farringale. The splendid Court of the Trolls, rich and age-old; there could be no other. But something about these grand strangers caught at the eye, and at the heart. They had travelled long and far, for there was a weariness about them, and a melancholy.

‘Offered bread and wine, the king declined, and so did all his party. They needed no sustenance, they said, and asked nothing of those who greeted them, save for one thing only. “We come in search of a home,” said Furgidan. “Some distant place, rich in magick, where we will be of trouble to no one.”‘

‘It is not known whither the dispossessed king went,’ said the giant, beginning to play the soft rhythm on his drums that indicated the story was drawing to a close. ‘Some say that he went into the south, to the Seas of Segorne and the islands there. Others trace his path deep into the North, to the Hyndorin Mountains and their Vales of Wonder. None can say for certain.

‘But a whisper once reached my ears about Furgidan the Dispossessed. It’s said that, wherever he and his courtiers made their home, they are there still. Not even the passage of centuries can defeat the lost King of Farringale.’

The tale ended there, for the giant returned to his drumming as his partner called for more requests. To my puzzlement, the drummer winked at me.

I mulled over the possible meanings of this gesture. I supposed he meant to indicate that he’d taken some liberties with the tale, which of course I had guessed. For one thing, this event — if it had taken place at all — had not happened on Whitmore, or Melmidoc would have met Furgidan the Dispossessed. Instead, only a whisper of the story had reached the Redclover brothers’ ears, which argued for a much more distant setting.

For another thing, I highly doubted that Furgidan — or rather, Torvaston — and his court were still alive somewhere, three and a half centuries later. That smacked to me of a cute way of ending a tale which, in its natural form, had no real ending at all. A twist of the storytellers’ art: a tendency to adapt the details of a story to suit the tastes of their audience.

And I didn’t want to get started on the question of how Torvaston had known of the sixth Britain when, according to Alban, his descendants knew of only three Britains, not including this one.

But what truths might we glean from the tale, having stripped away the embellishments? Some parts of it did not altogether make sense. Then again, some parts of it were highly interesting.

We went back to the library.

‘Points of interest,’ I said a little later, as I stalked shelves overflowing with history books. ‘Why were they weary? They had travelled far, yes, in the technical sense, but they hadn’t travelled long. They must have arrived by Waymaster; they hadn’t journeyed for months on foot. What was the matter with them?’

‘And why were they melancholy?’ Jay put in. ‘Yes, they’d lost Farringale, and perhaps that’s reason enough. But no mention of that was made in the story. Why did they come here, instead of going to Mandridore with the rest?’

‘Third point,’ said Alban, dropping a heavy tome down onto the nearest study table with a boompf. ‘These Seas of Segorne and mountainous Vales of Wonder. Were they pulled out of thin air for the tale, because they sound good? Or were they significant? I think the latter. Look.’ He riffled quickly through the book, careless of its aging paper, and skimmed a page or two. ‘The Seas of Segorne,’ he said. ‘Place of myth, said to have existed somewhere off the southwest coast of Britain. The islands there weren’t the traditional kind, for instead of floating on the water they drifted in the air, several feet above the sea’s surface. It was thought that the area was so soaked in magick that it had been warped by it, and nothing there was as it should’ve been.’

He turned several more pages. ‘Then the Hyndorin Mountains and those Wonder Vales. Same thing. Sounds to me like there were some magickal Dells scattered about up there, but unusually potent ones, flooded with magick. They, too, had gone a little strange. One was the site of a plethora of magick-induced mutations; nothing living that went in ever came out quite the same. One was said to have made a bubble of itself and floated away. Etc.’ He looked at me. ‘They asked for a place rich in magick, according to the story.’

‘Not just rich, but drowning in it,’ I mused. ‘Even to the point of being highly unsafe.’

‘Mm. But what does that do to our theory about old Farringale? If there was some kind of magickal disaster there, and the place was flooded, then it’s natural that Torvaston and company would flee from it, like everyone else. But why would they go searching for another home much the same?’

‘I wonder if they left voluntarily,’ said Jay, leafing through a book.

‘As much so as the rest, I suppose?’ I said. ‘Nobody wanted to abandon Farringale.’

‘I don’t mean Farringale, I mean Mandridore. We’ve been assuming that they chose to come here instead. What if they were exiled?’

‘Torvaston the Second, exiled from his own court?’ Alban was incredulous. ‘And exiled by, presumably, his own wife? How could that be?’

‘I don’t know, but it would explain the melancholy, wouldn’t it?’

‘That might just have been a detail for the story,’ Alban objected. ‘Included to get the audience to pity the dispossessed king.’

‘Might be,’ Jay agreed. ‘Then again, might not.’

I mulled this over. ‘It would take something very, very big to get the king kicked out.’

‘To say the least,’ said Jay.

‘As in, catastrophically big.’ I didn’t want to air the direction my thoughts were tending in. My vague new hypothesis bordered too much on the treasonous.

So I kept it to myself.

‘If something like that happened,’ said Alban, ‘there must be some record of it at Mandridore. There must.’

‘If so, I’m guessing it’s deeply buried,’ I said.

‘Luckily, I happen to know the queen.’ Alban grinned, a shade rueful.

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