fantasy fiction

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 16

by

It was a close-run thing. As we drew nearer, I could see the way Indira wobbled as she sat, the currents of wind knocking her about like a stray leaf.

No time to think. We swooped, Addie’s broad wings battling a gust of wind as she banked and turned. Jay leaned—grabbed—he had her; and away we went, spiralling downwards. Strong as she was, Addie couldn’t carry three of us for more than a few minutes; we had to get her hooves on the ground, and quickly.

‘Thanks,’ gasped Indira, breathless.

‘What the hell—’ said Jay, breaking off abruptly as Addie thudded into a heavy landing. We’d come down in a street I didn’t recognise, almost too narrow for Addie’s wingspan. Tall, stone-built houses rose on either side, as empty and dead as the rest of Farringale, their small, square gardens riotously overgrown.

‘Surge,’ Indira said to her brother as she slipped lightly down. ‘Boosted me higher than I meant to go, and then the wind caught me.’ She made a whoosh gesture with one hand, most illustrative.

Jay made no reply, it being a bit late for such niceties as “you should be more careful.”

‘We were looking for you,’ I said, choosing not to get down from Addie’s back just yet. The surge roiled on, stirring all the magick in me into a dizzying whirlpool, and I was beginning to feel nauseated.

But that was a good thing; it meant we weren’t too late.

‘I was looking for you, too,’ Indira answered, and produced, from one of her air-pockets, two regulators.

No. I took a second look: three lay nestled in her palm, winking starry silver in the sunlight.

‘Rob got the one from the griffins!’ I guessed.

Indira nodded. ‘Couldn’t find you, but he found me.’

I handed mine to her, completing the quartet. Four of them. Would it be enough?

It would have to be. And to echo Jay: what we couldn’t accomplish with four, we probably couldn’t accomplish with five either.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘It’s time.’ I tasted bile as I spoke, the product of raw fear. I wasn’t ready. I’d never be ready. But if I couldn’t make this happen, who else could? Fenella? Improbable, and undesirable besides. Mandridore couldn’t be left beholden to such a person as that.

Jay slid down off Addie’s back, joining his sister on the ground. But he stayed close, and looked up at me with perfect confidence as he said: ‘Where to?’

‘The library.’ Back to where it all began; where I’d first encountered Baroness Tremayne. Where we’d found Bill, and consequently gained Mauf. The trail had begun there: those first clues leading us from Farringale to Mandridore and all the way to another Britain entirely. It was fitting that our journey would end there, too.

Jay set off unerringly, leading us in a slow procession up the near-silent street. We were silent, too, sober with the weight of responsibility, dry-mouthed with fear, light-headed with magick. When I tried to speak—some nonsense or other to break the deathly quiet—my words emerged half-strangled, a mere wordless croak.

Jay looked back at me. ‘Are you okay?’

We were a bit beyond polite lies, so I went for the truth. ‘Nope.’

He nodded. ‘We can do this,’ he said, and his voice rang with all the conviction I’d forgotten how to feel.

I smiled back, a little. ‘Let’s hope so.’

***

If the streets above had seemed quiet, the cellars beneath the library were like a tomb.

I didn’t have to walk through walls, this time—or be dragged, like a sack of potatoes. Jay found a winding way through the bare-walled chambers—stripped, now, of their precious books—along a narrow passage, and down a cramped, spiralling staircase, and we stepped out into a cool, stone-walled subterranean chamber, empty apart from the three of us, and shrouded in an unearthly silence.

I’d had to leave Addie outside, and was already suffering from the separation. But those walls were sturdy and solid, the stone very cold under my hands as I steadied myself against them.

We needed no light. A pallid, sickly glow emanated from the floor, thrown off by a writhing mass of tiny, hungry parasites. I shuddered at the sight of them, a chill of pure horror rippling down my spine. I knew they wouldn’t hurt me—they were devourers of magick and, by preference, trolls. They had no interest in a Cordelia.

Still, to set my feet into that mess of wriggling bodies took more nerve than I thought I possessed. I descended from the stairs very carefully, and paused.

Indira, behind me, made a sound of disgust, and her footsteps stopped on the steps.

‘Stay there,’ I suggested. ‘If you can deploy the regulators from up there, then there’s no need to come any farther down.’

Indira accepted this suggestion with obvious gratitude. Jay, though, visibly steeled himself, and waded into the echoing chamber to stand beside me. He waited, steady and calm, solid as the stone walls of the cellar itself.

The surge was dissipating at last, its tide of magick spent. The right moment neared; not yet, but soon. I set my lyre down on the bottom step of the stairs, near my feet. It glimmered with a pale light of its own, but a cleaner, comforting glow, and I breathed more easily for it.

‘Indira,’ I said. ‘When it’s not surging, Farringale’s latent magick runs rather low. Probably because it’s been empty for centuries. When it hits its lowest ebb… we need to use that momentum. Keep it going.’

‘Going—where?’ asked Indira.

‘I don’t know. Ebbing. Dissipating. I want it as dead as Silvessen in here.’

‘You want to strip all the magick out of all of Farringale.’ Indira spoke in tones of disbelief.

‘As close to it as we can get, yes. It’s the wild magick that’s been sustaining these things. I can’t remove them as long as they’re still feeding off it.’

‘Can you remove them anyway?’ Jay asked. ‘All of them?’

He meant how; by what possible method did I propose to obliterate a city-wide infestation of parasites? I didn’t have a clear answer, for him or for me.

‘Yes,’ I told him anyway. One problem at a time. First, the magick; then, the ortherex.

Indira said nothing more, but set about deploying the first of the regulators. I hoped her silence indicated confidence.

A tremor ran through the walls and the floor underfoot; a soft buzz of magick taking effect. Metal scraped over stone, cracking and grinding, and ceased with a jolt. ‘One down,’ said Indira.

The air split, shattered, and spat out a tall, bulky figure: too much of both to be the baroness. A male troll, simply dressed in a swallow-tailed coat and pantaloons, his hair bone-white with age. He said nothing, but his presence was imposing enough; Jay was instantly alert.

‘Wait,’ I asked him, holding up a hand. The gentleman had offered us neither violence nor threat, and a stray memory teased at me…had not Baroness Tremayne spoken of others like herself, a year ago? The long-forgotten guardians of Farringale, lingering like ghosts in the walls, had numbered three.

I bowed to the newcomer, for he bore an air of nobility about him. ‘Have you come to help us?’ I asked hopefully.

He regarded me levelly. ‘Can you in truth rid us of these creatures?’

I wished people would stop asking me that. The word “no” kept trying to pop out in response. ‘We are going to try our best to do so,’ I managed to say instead.

Another grinding, crunching, teeth-aching sound, and the walls shuddered: the second regulator.

‘I will watch over you,’ said the guardian. ‘Foes abound.’

They did indeed. I was going to thank him, but before I could speak I was wrenched out of the world, soul and body together. The room splintered around me, dissolved into the strange, juddering, shadowy alternate reality that I was beginning to despise. We were between the echoes again, one half-step to the left of the flow of time.

‘That’s one way of watching over us,’ said Jay with a grimace.

I watched Indira, poised to assist, for I didn’t think she had experienced this particular strangeness before. But she was absorbed in her task, oblivious—or at least, unflappable. A third regulator took effect: one to go.

And the environment was stabilising by the minute, the surge rushing away like the outgoing tide. The regulators were humming, a melodic fizzing in my ears, my bones. ‘Jay,’ said Indira, his name a summons, a plea, and he went to her.

I left them to it, for they didn’t need me for this. I picked up my lyre, and cradled it with momentary tenderness. I think I knew, somewhere in me, what was to come…

‘Ves,’ said Indira, softly. ‘They’re in.’

‘Good.’

‘But—I don’t know if you understand. Magick can’t just dissipate. It has to go somewhere. There’s only so much the regulators can do—’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s okay.’ I was already turning my mind away from the regulators, from the clever and capable Patels; from the library cellar, writhing with infestation, and from the silent guardian who attended our efforts to save it. I spread my awareness like a net, out through the silent ruin of the library, and down, down, deep into the rock beneath. My fingers plucked a plaintive air from the strings of the argentine lyre, each rich note reverberating through the air, through the floor, through me.

It was worse than stepping into the midst of the ortherex—worse than wading barefoot through the mess and the mass of them. As I opened my mind to the land around me, feeling the cold earthiness of rock and dirt, the clear dampness of groundwater, the bright, surprising freshness of roots winding down from above, I felt the ortherex, too: felt them like a cloak of ants crawling over every inch of my skin. They bit at me, raged at me, a million motes of wrongness and disease.

I shuddered, shaking with the effort to curb my revulsion, to hold my mind down there in that terrible space. There was too much magick, still, swirling in airy currents, like gusts of wind: I could feel it with a startling clarity, the Merlin in me recognising it, welcoming it. The magick was ancient, here; almost as ancient as Merlin himself. It called…

No. This magick was not for me; I was not for it. I was here not to lend it my strength, call it back to all its former potency, but to do the opposite: to dampen it, shutter it, drain it away. Every natural impulse in me rebelled at the idea, and rebelled again: the magick belonged here, deep in the bones of the land, and it was my task—Merlin’s task—to protect it. To help it grow.

‘I will,’ I promised it, distantly. ‘Later.’

I bore down with a will, encouraged by the pulse of the regulators around me, my lyre joining with their delicate hum, carolling a dulcet lullaby. If it could not be removed, then perhaps it could be lulled; sink itself down into the bowels of the earth, far below the beleaguered city that was Farringale.

Go, I bade it, and added, pitifully, please.

It reacted instead with a surge, a flourishing. It drew me deeper into its flow, made of me a link in its web, a thread in its tapestry of power. More gathered around me, faster and faster; I became a brightening core, a burgeoning nexus of wild magick.

Giddy gods. This was like the lyre, but worse. The magick in me—Merlin’s magick—attracted that of Farringale; like spoke to like; I was making it stronger.

A tactical error, I thought with distant hysteria. I’d been wrong. I wasn’t the best person for this task, I was the worst; what I had thought to be an advantage proved to be the opposite.

And I was stuck down deep, melded with the sleeping earth below Farringale as magick sank into the very essence of me, and shone.

This was what it was like to be a griffin. Perhaps that had been an error, too; deprived of its foci, the magick of Farringale had not disappeared, but rather altered in shape, in sense, in current; had seized me, their substitute, and would not let me go.

I couldn’t fight it. I was strong, but my strength was no asset here: together, we were stronger still, in all the wrong ways.

Well. So.

An alternative idea drifted through my labouring thoughts, and at first I rejected it, utterly and completely. Every cell in me revolted at the notion, strained as I already was. The regulators were beginning to affect me, too, merged as I was with magick: they pulled at me, dragged at me, smothered the spark of my life in thick, grey dullness.

I didn’t have much time. I couldn’t say what would become of me, under all these competing forces, but I felt frayed like an old blanket, coming apart at the seams. There wouldn’t be much of me left, soon.

I searched my sluggish mind for another idea, any idea at all, and found nothing. There wasn’t another option.

Focus, Ves. I could bear it—probably. Hopefully.

In the space of a single breath, I stopped resisting the influx of magick, stopped pushing against it, stopped warding myself against the inexorable onslaught. If it wanted me, very well: let it have me. All of it.

I opened myself to it entirely, without barrier, and it came to my call: a vast, onrushing flood of it, drowning me in power—in possibility—in life. I had drowned like this once before, in Vale, when I’d first taken up the lyre; but this, this, was as the ocean to a lake: unimaginably immense, and far beyond my capacity to contain.

Were it not for the regulators, and the griffins’ absence—had I attempted it with the surge at its highest—it would undoubtedly have destroyed me.

As it was, I held it—barely, and briefly; I needed only to focus my attention, frame my intent, fix everything I had upon that other devouring sea, the ortherex.

Power arced about me in a haze of lightning, lethal starfire exploding from the very core of me, setting me alight; I screamed, and screamed again, but it wasn’t agony, not quite—

As all the magick of Farringale spiralled and built and blazed around me, I gathered one last surge of will: let it blaze, then, let it burn.

Magick tore through me, and I shattered; into a thousand motes, into a million. A current ripped through Farringale, stronger, far stronger, than even the most potent of its surges: stones thundered and crumbled around me.

And with every pulsing wave that shuddered through the ground, ten thousand ortherex flared with starfire, and winked out.

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 15

by

‘You will need the regulators,’ said Milady, unruffled now, and resolute. Magick shone in her green gaze as she looked at me, and I wondered. Had she had one of her hunches about this? Some prophetic dream? In the midst of everyone else’s surprise—or horror—Milady had been an ocean of mildly disapproving calm.

But then, so was she always.

‘They’ve got one in there with the griffins,’ Jay pointed out. ‘Indira’s got two with her and I hope they’ve secured the other one Ancestria Magicka stole. Can you manage with three?’

I have no idea was the honest response, but there was no room to be feeble-minded now. ‘Yes,’ I said stoutly.

Jay, more sensibly, said: ‘Well, if we can’t do it with three then I don’t suppose we can do it with four, either,’ and he wasn’t wrong.

‘Where’s Indira?’ I said. I felt a terrible sense of urgency, of time rushing past and events spiralling more out of our control by the minute. As soon as the griffins were out of Farringale, we had to be ready to act. Fenella wouldn’t leave us much time, not when it became apparent that we weren’t going to simply walk away and leave her to it.

‘I don’t know,’ said Jay, tersely.

‘She is at the bridge,’ said Milady serenely.

How did she know? I saw the question unfurl across Jay’s face, but he didn’t ask it, and neither did I. Mab had her ways.

‘The same bridge that was guarded by several giants and trolls?’ Jay said instead, concern replacing curiosity.

‘She is well,’ said Milady. ‘And I believe she has—’

The ground shifted underfoot, and buckled; for a dizzying instant, the world spun, shimmering like a wave of heat. Milady gasped, and crumpled. I tried to run to her side, but the street tipped sideways and fell on me.

When I opened my eyes again I saw Jay’s face outlined against the clear sky, grim and silent.

‘What happened,’ I croaked.

‘You and Milady fell. I don’t know why.’

I sat up, clutching at Jay. Waves of magick, pure and deep and wild, pulsed through the ground underfoot, each striking me like an electric shock. ‘It’s a surge,’ I gasped. ‘But different. Much—worse.’

‘It only seems to be affecting you and Milady,’ Jay said. ‘Or, mostly. I’m not feeling very much—’

‘Mab is a being of pure magick,’ I said, choking on the stuff as I spoke. I attempted to climb Jay like a tree, the better to regain my feet; he grasped my arms, and helped me up.

‘Apparently, so are you,’ he observed, steadying me.

‘No, but—close to it.’ That, I thought, was the problem: I had so much magick woven through my being that I couldn’t help but be deeply affected. I felt stirred like a bowl of porridge—whisked like a bucket of eggs—Gods, I could hardly form a coherent thought.

‘The griffins are gone,’ gasped Milady, both her hands pressed palm-flat against the earth of Farringale, and her eyes alight with its magick.

‘Already,’ I breathed. ‘I thought we’d have more time—’

‘Ves,’ said Rob urgently, and there was a world of meaning in the word, the tone. You need to move, it said. Now.

He was right. My Society had trusted me. Farringale needed me. I couldn’t let them down.

I felt a moment’s sharp regret for the griffins, and smothered it. I didn’t have time to worry about them now. That was Miranda’s task. I had to focus on mine.

But first, I needed to clear my swimming head.

I considered the lyre, and discarded the idea. Not yet. Not now. Instead I dug out my syrinx pipes, and blew a piercing, jagged trio of notes upon them. The harsh sounds split the air in a discordant jangle, carrying my message to Adeline. Help. Help me.

‘We need Indira,’ I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. ‘We need Baroness Tremayne. And we need every regulator that’s available. If that’s three—two—so be it.’

The surge was still building; we had a little time. But not much. As soon as it ebbed, I needed to be ready.

The air split, and Baroness Tremayne stepped out of nothing. ‘I am here.’

‘I’ll need your—shape-shifting,’ I told her. ‘Soon.’ Conceding the griffins to Fenella’s care left me with a problem. If we weren’t the ones who had taken them out, then we couldn’t decide when to bring them back, either.

The baroness asked no questions, merely nodded her assent, and vanished again. I hoped—trusted—she would stay close, somewhere beyond my perception.

‘We need all the regulators,’ Rob said. ‘Whether you use them or not, Ves, they can’t be left in Fenella’s hands.’

Right. She’d be trying to use them herself. I mentally heaped curses on Fenella Beaumont’s head.

‘She’ll have taken one of them with her,’ Jay warned.

He was right about that. The shifting of that regulator, and the removal of the griffins, had probably caused—or at least were contributing to—the surge. ‘One problem at a time,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to—immobilise her. Later.’

And here came Addie, arrowing down out of the sky in a burst of light. She landed heavily, kicking up a spray of earth, and came for me at a gallop. I grabbed for her, hauled myself onto her back; as soon as my fingers touched the soft velvet of her hide I began to feel better. She balanced me, settled the sickening swirl of magick, and my head cleared. I’d still like a sunny afternoon at the grove for optimum results, but it would do.

‘Right,’ I said, straightening my back. Everything in me ached, like my bones were on fire. ‘Time to work.’

I expected words from Milady, instructions, orders, but she lay prone still, like a fallen flower. She would recover—when Farringale did.

Rob was looking at me, expectant. So was Jay, and Melissa, and—everyone.

I swallowed panic, and thought furiously. They were waiting for orders—from me. Right, then. ‘A few people need to stay with Mab. If you can safely get her out of here, do so. Jay, with me. We’re making a run for Indira. Rob and team: see if you can secure the missing regulator from Fenella. If not, please obstruct her by any reasonably fair, mostly non-violent means available. I need space to do this.’

‘Reasonably fair,’ Rob said, and nodded.

‘Mostly non-violent,’ added Melissa, and smiled, not at all nicely. I didn’t pursue the point. No one would be shedding tears if Fenella emerged with a bruise or two.

Jay swung himself up behind me, like a pro. The days when he’d shied away from riding horseback seemed a long time ago, and I suppose they were. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Which way to the bridge?’

Jay pointed, and we were off, Addie’s hoofbeats thundering against the dry earth like the drums of war.

***

At the bridge, chaos reigned. We came barrelling around a corner at a ground-eating canter and nearly ran into the prone form of one of the giants; Addie jinked around the obstacle at the last moment, the abrupt movement nearly hurling Jay off her back. The giant’s thunderous snores proclaimed him asleep, not unconscious, and I remembered the last time I’d seen Indira: she’d pressed several of Orlando’s sleep capsules into my hands. I still had them.

Indira had put hers to good use, for several other bodies, still as corpses, littered the narrowing white street. Some kind of pitched battle had taken place for control of the gate, but we’d missed most of it. There were people everywhere, spread across the street in a disorganised, struggling mass.

I couldn’t immediately tell who was winning, and for a moment everybody seemed a faceless stranger; I recognised none of the people I saw. My heart sank. Were we too late?

Then Zareen came surging out of a knot of people at a dead run, heading for… oh no, that was George Mercer, face set in a rictus of angry determination, Wand raised—for a horrible instant I felt a stab of fear straight to the heart: Zareen wasn’t—she wouldn’t—

No, of course she wouldn’t. Miranda had made me paranoid. Nothing in Zar’s face registered a welcome—in fact she looked angrier than I’ve ever seen, ready to tear his face off with her fingernails—it took me a second to realise why—and I was too late, we were both too late, for Mercer made a smashing motion with his fist, his Sardonyx Wand catching the light in a black slash, and with a shattering boom the earth exploded.

A massive spray of earth and stone soared skywards—cries of pain rent the air as the dislodged paving stones hurtled down again, striking friend and foe alike.

And something else went flying into the sky—something that glinted eerily silver, flashing like a falling star.

The regulator.

Mercer, in a shattering display of bullish brute force, had blasted the thing right out of the earth. He needed only to catch it, and run…

But Zareen knew George Mercer, and she’d seen it coming. If I’d thought she’d been planning to attack him, I was wrong: with a gravity-defying leap, she snatched the regulator out of the sky, and collided heavily with him on the way down. They fell in a tangle of dirt and stone and limbs but Zar was up again in seconds, ruthlessly smashing Mercer’s face into the earth as she went.

‘VES!’ she yelled. I thought she’d pitch the regulator at me, but she didn’t trust it to the skies again. She tore towards us on foot, dodging felled and sleeping trolls, piles of shattered stones and three unwise people who attempted to intercept.

I spurred Addie forward and we galloped to meet her, clearing a snoring giant in one flying leap.

Too late—Mercer was up—however fast Zareen could run, he was faster. He’d be on her before she could reach us.

With a snarl of pure fury, Zareen threw herself forward in a perfect and utterly reckless rugby tackle. She fell heavily, with a sharp cry of pain—but cool metal stung my fingers, and my hand closed on intricately-worked argent.

‘Get it out of here!’ she roared, looking ready to tear my face off if I didn’t obey.

No fear of that. ‘Up!’ I ordered, kicking at Addie’s flanks, and we were airborne, winging away from the carnage at the gate with the regulator securely clutched in my fist.

‘That woman must’ve been a terror on the lacrosse pitch,’ I gasped, half winded.

‘Indira!’ Jay shouted in my ear, pointing. ‘There.’

The distant shape could have been a bird—I’d have taken it for such—but I trusted Jay. And he was right: the dark blur was bombing towards us at reckless speed, and soon gained a more distinct shape. Indira, not demonstrating improbable powers of flight, however it may appear, but seated rather precariously atop a witched slab of something stony, and hurtling our way.

‘What the bloody hell—’ yelled Jay in my ear. ‘She’ll fall.’

She looked like she might, any second, and she was far too high up. If she fell, she’d die.

‘Right,’ I said, and spurred Addie on to lightning speed. We had to catch her—now.

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 12

by

‘I don’t think you’ll like what I’m going to do with it,’ I felt obliged to add, as Jay’s face broke into a smile of relief.

The smile vanished. ‘All right, break it to me gently.’

‘No time.’ The sight of so many of Fenella’s people guarding the bridge had rattled me. What were they doing in there, that required so heavy a defence? The Society would be arriving any time now—they’d got royal permission to use the old troll roads; they’d be practically flying along—and they needed to be able to get straight in. I didn’t have time to negotiate with Jay.

By the time those two terse words left my lips, I was already at work. The gate was entirely defunct—no surprise there. I couldn’t tell what had functioned as the portal, long ago; probably a boulder or some other, like object, those were popular choices. Doubtless it had been cleared away when Farringale was sealed up. Nothing remained, then, for me to reawaken, and I had neither the time nor the knowledge necessary to create a fresh new gate here.

But we had encountered a similar problem recently, and I’d solved it. Inadvertently, yes, by way of an involuntary burst of magick I did not immediately know how to replicate. But if I’d done it once I could do it again.

I did as I had then, and sat down, putting the greater part of myself in direct contact with the ancient earth and its faded memory of magick. Not so difficult, really, to imagine myself a part of it; to lose myself in the peaceful sway of verdure, the soft and sharp smells of loam and sap; to join the dulcet notes of my lyre and my magick to those lacing the landscape around me. I heard, and felt, Jay shift beside me: an attempt to stop me, hastily suppressed. He would guess what I proposed to do, wouldn’t like it; would nonetheless accept, as I had, that the need was great and options few. I felt a stab of compunction as he settled again, and I turned my attention from him: how often had I cast him into torments of worry on my behalf? How often had I outraged his sense of caution, worn out his patience, ignored his fears—I’m sorry, Jay, I thought distantly, but I couldn’t say so, couldn’t even think about it right then, for I was shifting—bleeding into the landscape bit by bit—soon I was scarcely Ves any longer, naught left of me but a stray wisp of awareness, like a dream fraying away upon the wind.

***

It happened fast. Too fast. One minute she was Ves, seated at my feet, smiling apologetically at me with that damned lyre in her lap and magick wreathing round her like moths to a flame—and then she was gone, and there sat a Ves-sized rock, a craggy old boulder that looked for all the world as though it had been there since the dawn of time.

No ordinary boulder, of course. This one had motes of a purplish crystal laced through it, with flecks of silver—and, incidentally to its appearance, a profound magick about it, as old as Farringale itself (apparently) and very much functional.

‘A Fairy Stone,’ I sighed, and felt a stab of pain lance through my temples: a migraine on the approach. Perfect.

‘Okay,’ I said, and laid a hand against the cool, rough stone where Ves’s head had so recently been. ‘It’s okay. I’ll get you out of this—later.’

The incident with the chair, not to mention the tree, had proved all too clearly that the risks of Ves’s latest methods remained considerable. She could get herself into these messes; she needed me—us—to get her out of them again.

Later. She’d done this for good reason, and the next part was my task.

I called the number Milady—Mab—had recently given me, for just this purpose. She answered in seconds. ‘Jay?’

‘We’ve got a way in,’ I said without preamble. ‘She’s done it. I’m sending you co-ordinates.’

‘Thank you.’ Brief words, but a world of relief lay behind them.

‘Hurry,’ I said. ‘And avoid the main gate. It’s heavily guarded. Don’t let them see you.’

Nothing to do, then, but wait: and worry. About the progress of Ancestria Magicka’s plans, inside Farringale where they were, for the moment, unopposed. About my colleagues at the Society, about to face a unique challenge we may or may not be truly prepared for.

Most of all, about Ves, inert at my feet, so bound up in her myriad magicks that she might not, this time, ever get out of them again.

Not the most tranquil hour of my life.

Time moved agonisingly slowly, but Milady, thankfully, didn’t. I heard sounds of approach, and tensed, alert, heart pounding—ready to defend Ves and Farringale both to the limits of my ability—but it was Rob, striding over the heath towards me looking grim as death, and around him some twelve or fifteen of our colleagues. He’d trained every one of them, I knew: they were the best of us at the direct arts. By any other name, fighting. The advance force. Of course they’d be going in first.

Rob nodded at me, and looked around, nonplussed. Expecting to see either Ves or something that obviously looked like a gate, if not both.

I indicated the Fairy Stone, and Rob stared at it, frowning. ‘Ves hasn’t gone in alone, has she? She’s extremely competent but it’s far too dangerous—’

‘That’s Ves,’ I said. ‘She’s the gate.’

Rob was silent a moment, and then said: ‘You seem to be taking it well.’

‘It does seem that way, doesn’t it?’ I answered tightly.

He gave me another terse nod, this one tinged with sympathy. ‘We’ll be quick.’

And then he was gone, one hand planted firmly atop the stone-that-was-Ves, once. Magick surged as the members of his unit went in after him, one after another in a steady stream. By the time they were through, another group were arriving, and streaming into Farringale; faces blurred together as they went by me, too many to note, and I wondered whether it hurt Ves, whether she was even aware. She was strong, but she’d only done this sort of thing for a few of us before; now for fifty, seventy, a hundred…

Milady was among the last to arrive. Rob was her general, leading the charge: she was the shepherd, keeping everyone together, watching the rear.

She had Miranda with her, which was interesting. Miranda looked pale, tense and resolute. I wondered whether Milady kept her close out of trust, or its opposite, and perhaps she was wondering the same thing.

‘Thank you,’ Milady said again, to me, just before she went through. ‘Dear Ves. I hope she has not overreached herself.’

So strange, still, to look Milady in the face—and such a face; not young, not old, not human—more distinct by its lack, of anything I could call familiar.

Queen Mab indeed; I could have cast myself at her feet, and gladly. ‘She has,’ I answered. ‘She always does. I hope you won’t need the gate again, because I’m getting her out of there.’

Milady nodded. ‘Follow when you can,’ she said. ‘I’ll have need of you both.’

A grace period for Ves, then, albeit a small one. Good. Had I been ordered to haul her straight into the fray, I wouldn’t have been obeying it.

Milady awaited no response. In an instant she was gone, Miranda with her, leaving me alone with the inert lump of stone that was my maddening, alarming, adored and magnificent Ves.

I crouched down by her, set a careful hand to her lichen-covered surface, and spoke low and soothingly. She would be suffering, right about now. ‘I’m going through. And then we’re done. Okay? Just a couple more minutes and we’ll get you out of there.’

No response, of course: I wasn’t expecting any, though a faint hope withered and died. One last surge of magick, and magick took me, whirled me away: I entered Farringale Dell.

I looked around, oblivious to the landscape, to the knots of Society agents still in the process of disbursing. My only thought was for Ves: specifically, the appalling and impossible absence of her.

The Fairy Stone was not here.

How was that possible? Surely it could only function as a gate because it spanned the gap between the outer world, and the Dell: like a door, or a bridge. It had to be here—she had to be here—but it wasn’t. She wasn’t.

And because the stone wasn’t there—the gate wasn’t there—I couldn’t go back through and find her, either.

She was stuck, lost, and I’d lost her.

***

It occurred to me, distantly and belatedly, that we really ought to have warned Baroness Tremayne before we returned in force.

Not that the thought caused me much alarm. It’s difficult to feel distress, as a rock. There’s a stolid placidity to stone that one cannot help but absorb, even when one is only mostly a rock.

I had forgotten her altogether—Jay, too—everything, really, beyond the perimeter of my own boulder. A peaceful interlude, altogether. But a voice intruded upon my dreaming serenity, an insistent voice that vibrated through the core of me, demanding attention.

Cordelia Vesper, it said, over and over again, and I remembered that was my name.

Yes? I answered, cautiously.

Is that you?

Was I Cordelia? Distantly, I thought so. Ves, I answered. I’m Ves. I think.

Palpable relief; the voice made some wordless sound, a swiftly expelled breath. A sigh. Thank goodness. I had thought—there are so many of you.

I focused, gradually, and remembered. Many of us. Yes. Milady, and the Society, in force. It’s all right. Those are Mab’s troops. They’re here to help.

I should have said “we”, I suppose, for I, too, was there to be useful. Hopefully. But stone feels no sense of either agency or urgency, and mine were all gone somewhere. I drowsed in a lake of my own magick, lulled and sun-warmed; in seconds, I’d forgotten the baroness again.

Cordelia Vesper, came the voice again, with the insistent note of one who has repeated the same phrase several times, and failed to win a response.

I gave myself a strong mental shake. Yes! Sorry. I’m Ves.

We have established that.

Right.

Think you to remain a Fairy Stone all your days?

I thought about that, a bit. Not so terrible a prospect, honestly: quite peaceful. No? I ventured.

Your duty is fulfilled, methinks. None now linger about you, save one, at a remove.

One lingered. One! Jay must be the one.

At a remove? What does that mean?

She did not answer me, precisely, only said: Is it your wish to follow in Mab’s train?

Yes, I said, thinking of Jay more than Mab. I hesitated, struck at last by my predicament: I was a Fairy Stone, and my body seemed to think it had always been a Fairy Stone.

The same problem I’d encountered at Silvessen, not to mention the chair incident. And the tree. How easily my body and mind resigned their customary state, and adopted another’s; how difficult it was, afterwards, to think my way back into me.

Ophelia might have some idea as to why, but I didn’t. I’m stuck, I admitted. I needed Jay, or Zareen, or somebody, to pull me out of it again. And Jay was there—at a remove.

Excruciating pain, suddenly: my thoughts dissolved into agony. I felt uprooted, as though grabbed by the hair, and pulled.

And I burst out of the stone, the land, the magick, like a weed wrenched out of a vegetable patch—and woke up, screaming, to find Jay’s terrified face looming above me.

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 11

by

Jay and I were not to go with the main force. Ours was the role of scout: we were to whisk away on the Winds and get back to Farringale well ahead of Milady and the rest of the Society. We left Rob (apparently in field command) organising our colleagues into teams—or, one may as well say, units—and hurried back down into the cellar.

Indira emerged from the crowd as we pushed and apologised our way back to the cellar stairs. ‘Here,’ she said, thrusting something into my hands; I caught it reflexively, felt rather than saw what it was. Smooth, jellyish spheres, cool to the touch: Orlando’s spellware.

‘Restoratives?’ I asked in hope.

She nodded once. ‘And sleep pearls. Don’t eat the red ones.’ With which words of wisdom, she vanished into the crowd.

I checked the contents of my palms: I had several red ones, and four green ones. I gave two of each to Jay, and pocketed the rest of the spheres in separate pockets: red ones left, green ones right.

Well, one green one; one of them went straight into my mouth. I blessed Indira’s forethought as it dissolved on my tongue, tasting of peaches. They’re fast-acting: within a minute or two, a lot of my fatigue had receded, and that delicious fizz of energy began racing through my veins. I was bouncing on my toes as we ran down to the henge, bursting with vigour.

‘If only it were possible to feel like this all the time,’ I mused, as Jay’s Winds of the Ways began to swirl through the room.

‘Exhausting prospect,’ Jay disagreed, absently. ‘You’d never sleep again.’

‘I’d never need to.’ Jay hadn’t taken his yet, that I had seen. I hoped he wasn’t going to pull a manly manoeuvre, and stubbornly go without. He had to be at least as fatigued as I was, after several trips through the Ways.

There followed a period of scrambling hurry, Jay too tense and focused for conversation. I chose not to distract him, for fear he might fly us into the side of a building, or smear us, pancake-like, up and down the unforgiving face of a cliff.

Once we emerged near Winchester, it was my turn: my job, to get us over the several miles to Farringale as fast as possible. Addie bore both of us proudly, and shot like an arrow through the balmy skies of southern England. The nearer we got, the greater my sense of urgency; all thoughts of Mandridore faded, and of Mab, replaced by a growing disquiet.

We’d been absent from Farringale for too much of the day. The sun remained high, but the afternoon was wearing away, and what had become of the griffins while we’d been mobilising? What of the rest of the city? For there must be some ultimate purpose behind the raiding of the library, and the subduing of the griffins—not to mention the theft and installation of at least one of Orlando’s regulators. What if we were too late? We had—I had—given away our presence, earlier. They knew their activities there were no longer a secret. If I were Fenella, I’d have accelerated my timeline to warp speed, and got out as fast as possible—before, for example, the Society and the Troll Court could form a devastating alliance (aided by several other magickal communities), and descend upon them in force.

We might arrive to find the city empty, of griffins and anything else of value. Our enemies gone, absconded with innumerable priceless and irreplaceable articles of troll culture and heritage.

Were I to give voice to my real fear, though, it was nothing of the sort. Why bother with the regulators, if the goal was only to rob the city? Why subdue the griffins, and then—rather than taking them out of the city, as I’d have expected—leave them in situ? They would never kill them: griffins were far too valuable. But if they weren’t stealing them, what were they doing?

They’d arrived in force—as we were doing. Was that in order to empty the city as fast as possible? Was it merely a question of bringing as many hands as possible, the better to thieve at speed?

Or had they brought so much manpower to Farringale because they were taking over the city?

Such unhappy thoughts kept me silent with mounting worry through the ten-mile flight, conducted at a speed that might, ordinarily, have set my guts churning with exhilarated terror. As we drew near to the bridge, my reverie came to an abrupt end, and with it, my long silence.

The site was no longer deserted. Stationed either side of the bridge, right there in the open, and very obviously armed with Wands, stood a pair of giants, the largest I’d ever seen. Each had a small unit of mixed troops with them: humans side-by-side with, to my very great dismay, several trolls.

‘Crap,’ I uttered eloquently. ‘That’s not—good.’

‘That,’ said Jay, ‘is very bad indeed.’

I pulled Addie up, halting our flight. ‘They’re entrenched. That’s a hostile takeover going on down there.’

Jay nodded. He understood the implications: if they were guarding the gate, and so openly, then they were declaring control of the city. This was a shameless, blatant attempt to seize Farringale entirely, and all its contents.

My heart sank to see trolls down there, supporting a cause so flagrantly founded upon greed. But perhaps it wasn’t so surprising, after all. The romance of Farringale could seduce the hardest heart; and since, as far as I knew, the Court at Mandridore had not, until today, publicised their own intentions in the direction of their lost enclave, it mightn’t have been difficult for Fenella to sway these to her side.

‘What do we do?’ I asked Jay, momentarily stymied. Milady’s plan to surge through the gate en masse, and attempt a quick overthrow of Ancestria Magicka’s forces, had suffered a check already. If Fenella had stationed so many on this side of the gate, I was willing to bet many more waited on the other side.

True, our numbers were still superior; hers would be scattered across Farringale, enacting the various parts of her plan. But still. A pitched battle at the gate was not what anyone wanted.

‘We need another way in,’ Jay decided. ‘And fast.’

‘There is no other way in,’ I protested. ‘That’s why we’ve always faffed around with the keys.’

‘There must be. Or there must have been, at one time. It’s an entire city. They can’t have managed with only one way in.’

‘You’re right, but it’s been closed for centuries. Sealed. Those old ways must be long gone, and even if they aren’t, how do you propose to find—and unseal—one of them in the next couple of hours?’

‘You’ve got the lyre.’

I had. I was unlikely to forget it, for the thing sang ceaselessly at me at the back of my mind; an alluring, enchanting melody, hard to resist. I was mentally postponing the moment when I would, inevitably, have to take up the beautiful, dangerous instrument, and play it again. The last time I’d done so, the results had been—explosive. Especially for me.

‘What do you imagine me able to do with it?’ I asked, cautiously.

‘I don’t know. But you’ve got the lyre, and you’ve got all of Merlin’s magick. If anybody can find a way in, and fast, it’s going to be you.’

In other words: this problem was all mine.

I felt a surge of panic, and suppressed it. No time for that. Farringale needed me; the Society needed me. Think, Ves.

Jay, a warm weight at my back, squeezed my waist. ‘You can do this,’ he said, sensitive, apparently, to the intense pressure my mind was trying to buckle under.

Addie was beginning to tire: unicorns aren’t made to hover. I turned her, and bade her fly a slow circle around the environs of Farringale. ‘Can you ward us from sight?’ I asked Jay. ‘I don’t want that lot to spot us, yet.’

‘Done,’ said Jay, and fell silent. I felt a little surge of magick from him, a charm woven around Addie and her riders: if we were visible at all to those below, we’d appear as a large bird.

One problem solved. I let Addie and Jay take over our direction: my mind shifted to the problem of entry.

Jay, broadly, was right: there must have been another way in, once upon a time. Any fae settlement or enclave typically had two ways of entry and egress: one between the enclave and the outside world, and one communicating with the wider magickal dell in which it was situated.

The bridge over the river Alre belonged to the former category. What of the latter? Was there a way into Farringale Dell, besides going through Farringale itself?

I fished in my trusty satchel, and withdrew the glorious, glittering lyre. Time was, they’d never have simply handed the thing to me: far too dangerous. Its deep, wild powers were wont to overwhelm me. That they had done so now—my mother, anyway, apparently on Milady’s orders—disquieted me rather. Was it that I was powerful enough now to bear it? Or was the threat to Farringale so dire, and so important, that I was considered an acceptable sacrifice?

No. My mother might throw me under the proverbial bus, if it suited her, but Milady wouldn’t. I had to trust her judgement—and my own strength. I was, after all, much mightier than I used to be.

I took a breath, and did my best to dismiss such an unhelpful spiral of fear. The lyre, cool in my hands, greeted me with a ripple of its airy strings, and a soft swell of its distinctive Yllanfalen magick. At least one of us was pleased to be working together again.

It wasn’t hard to lose myself in it. I began to play, one of the plaintive airs I’d once acquired from Ygranyllon: the melody didn’t matter, it was merely a conduit for the magick.

The effects were neither so intense, nor so terrifying, as when I’d played the lyre in the town of Vale. There, I’d been on another world: a more deeply magickal world than ours. Here, there were no such currents to sweep me away. This was our own plain, stolid Britain, a magickal backwater, and the threads of latent power I was able to perceive, even with the lyre, were meagre indeed.

I closed my eyes as I sank into the spells I was weaving; when I opened them again, an altered landscape lay spread before me. I saw, through Merlin’s eyes, a blanket of rolling green, dotted with knots of trees, and the clustered rooftops of towns. Laced through this verdure ran rivulets of ancient magick, latent and weak, half smothered by technology and time, but they held; oh, they held.

And there, away towards the Farringale gate: a savage pull of deep power, like the undertow of the ocean. Farringale lay tucked between the spaces in this landscape, on the other side of its fortified gate; but a city so ancient, so magick-drowned, could not help but exert its influence.

‘That way,’ I murmured to Addie, and it seemed to me that my voice echoed, throbbing with profound magick—painfully so. The currents shook me to my bones, and on some deep, frightening level I wanted to hurl myself into it—merge with it—drown in that sea of power. I would emerge—changed. Something other.

I gritted my teeth, and focused afresh on Farringale. On the dell I sought, and the way through. My mind skittered across that landscape of leylines, testing, probing, touching—there. There, a concentrated knot of magick, a thousand layers deep. An ancient cluster of charms, dormant now, shuttered like a window against the sun: but they had opened something, once, had presided over the passage of a thousand long-dead souls.

A gate—or what had once been a gate. It would be so again.

‘I’ve got it,’ I said.

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 10

by

The meeting didn’t close so much as peter out, dissolving into ragged knots of people promising aid and plotting tactics.

Jay and I were called on to describe the situation in Farringale, and to express the Society’s intentions regarding its resolution. Once done, our part was largely finished. Alban excused us, and escorted us out.

‘Our regards to Milady,’ he told us outside the great meeting hall, evidently about to zip off somewhere.

‘You mean Mab,’ I said, spurred by some spirit of mischief.

An odd look crossed his handsome face: the sort that spoke of indecision. To dissemble, or not to dissemble?

‘You knew, didn’t you?’ I accused. ‘The Court’s known forever, probably.’

‘I did know about Milady’s identity,’ he admitted. ‘I was asked to keep it to myself.’

I fumed a bit, though silently. I could hardly blame Alban for keeping his sworn word, and it wasn’t his fault that Milady had never decided to trust us with the knowledge.

‘She had her reasons,’ he said, gently enough.

I sighed. Of course she did, and if I could put aside my own feelings for a moment, I could take a guess at hers. Knowing some part of the truth about Milady changed things, there was no question about that. I’d known her – sort of – for over a decade, and yet, now that I knew her to be Queen Mab, my impression of her was markedly different. She hadn’t ceased to be the solid, wise, reliable chief of our odd little organisation, exactly; she was still that. But she was something much larger, too.

And I hadn’t known. Hadn’t even guessed.

‘Everything’s changed so much lately,’ I said, a little plaintively. ‘I can’t keep up.’

‘Things have changed,’ he agreed. ‘But some things haven’t, and won’t.’ He winked at me, kissed my cheek and left, with a nod to Jay.

‘Which things aren’t changing?’ I asked Jay.

He took my hand, and squeezed it. ‘Most of the things that matter. A few of the things that do, but we’ll manage.’

‘I like that “we”,’ I offered, and leaned on him for a moment.

‘I’ll be here,’ he said. ‘That isn’t changing. Come on. Let’s go talk to Queen Mab.’

***

The atmosphere at Home proved unusually tense. Jay and I whisked our way back to the henge in the cellar, and stepped smartly up the stairs. We were suffering a fair degree of weariness at that point, after a long day of events; but our dreams (or mine, anyway) of a quiet moment with a cup of chocolate were instantly dashed.

I’d no sooner stepped off the stairs than several people dashed by, almost mowing me down as I emerged. One of them was Melissa, offering a distracted greeting as she bombed past, clearly on a mission. Halfway down the passage towards the kitchens—if I couldn’t have a peaceful hour in the first-floor common room, I could at least bother Magnus for a snack—I ran into Zareen, or the other way about.

‘Ves! Where’ve you been,’ she proclaimed, snagging me by the arm as she passed, and dragging me along with her. ‘Everything’s gone mad. We’re being mobilised. You’d think there was a war on, or something. If anybody knows what it’s all about, it’d be you. Is it true that Farringale’s under siege? They’re saying Milady’s some kind of fairy queen? I’m telling you, it’s mental.’

Preoccupied with doing my best to keep up with Zareen’s frantic pace, I managed no more than a few, vaguely assenting syllables.

They were enough. Zareen stopped dead. ‘No. It’s all true?’

‘More or less,’ I said. ‘I mean, Farringale isn’t exactly under siege, but it’s certainly under a kind of attack. And Milady—’

‘Queen Mab,’ Zareen interrupted. ‘That’s what they’re saying, but surely not, that’d be crazy.’

‘It’s true.’ I looked around for Jay, hoping for backup, but he was nowhere in sight. ‘You remember Baroness Tremayne?’ I caught her up on recent events as we walked—half ran, really—and wondered, idly, where she was taking me. I was too tired to care overmuch. Milady would want me soon enough, and until then, I might as well go along with Zareen.

I did wish Jay hadn’t vanished, though.

‘That explains a few things,’ Zareen said, when I’d finished. ‘Miranda’s holding some kind of council of war in the convention room. Everyone who’s ever so much as looked at a magickal beast is in there with her. And Rob’s got half the rest mobilising to mount what he’s calling “a firm defence” but it sounds more like it’s going to be the bluntly aggressive kind. Ornelle’s handing out Wands like she’s running a sweet shop, though I don’t suppose you need any of that sort of thing now—’

‘And where are we going?’ I managed to interject, slightly out of breath after two flights of stairs.

‘Indira said—’ Zareen began, but as she spoke a great bell sounded out of nowhere, tolling three times. It had the deep, sonorous roar of those massive cathedral bells, and it seemed to be coming from everywhere all at once. Zareen and I both stopped dead, and clapped our hands over our ears—not that it did us much good. The tolling vibrated right through to my bones.

In the wake of the third strike of the bell, Milady’s voice rolled and echoed through the corridors of the House. ‘My dear Society. We find ourselves in a state of emergency, as you are no doubt all aware. I call upon each and every one of you to answer the call of Mandridore, and of Farringale. Those willing to participate in a mission of great urgency and likely danger shall assemble in the great hall immediately.’

‘Right.’ Zareen changed course, heading for the hall, and I dashed after her. We were going—going now, right now, there would be no more time to prepare. So great was the confusion of my thoughts that I scarcely blinked when my mother appeared around a corner, heading our way, and fell into step beside me.

‘Cordelia. Good. Here.’ She thrust something at me, which I absently took. Only when my fingers closed around the cool, smooth metal of the thing, and felt its latent buzz of magick, did I understand. She’d brought the moonsilver lyre, the lyre of Ygranyllon, her kingdom. Milady must have requested it: one of those moments of prescience she seemed to have, a hunch that we’d need it.

‘Mum?’ I said, fuzzily. The lyre was singing to me already, all the deep magick woven into its ancient frame calling to all the magick woven into mine. ‘What are you doing here?’

She looked at me like I was a complete idiot, and perhaps I was at that moment. ‘I’ve brought that,’ she replied, indicating the lyre I was clutching.

‘Yes, but—you’re the—you could have sent someone else?’

‘Could’ve,’ she allowed. ‘But I’m going with you.’

‘Oh.’ Several more questions blossomed in my mind in response—my mother didn’t often volunteer herself to clean up other people’s messes; what in the world was she doing involving herself with this one?—but I didn’t have chance to ask them. We were arriving at the hall, which was bristling with far too many people, and more were arriving every moment. I caught a glimpse of Jay’s face, and Indira’s, and felt reassured.

The double doors were open, affording me a glimpse of the green and blue spring day beyond. Several large vehicles waited outside, waiting to convey our forces south.

Our forces. It hadn’t seemed real, listening to Zareen babble about mass mobilisation of the entire Society. But now I was here, in the thick of it, it felt terribly real. At last, after considerable and varied forms of provocation, Milady had declared a kind of war on Ancestria Magicka. For the crime of looting the priceless heritage of Farringale, they were going to pay.

Milady’s voice rolled over the assembled crowd, loud enough to drown out the tense, excited chatter. ‘Quiet, please,’ she said, sternly, and the noise died instantly. ‘For those unaware: Ancestria Magicka, an organisation with which we have long endured an uneasy relationship, has violated the sovereign borders of the city of Farringale and committed several acts of theft and vandalism against it. This is unacceptable.

‘The Troll Court of Mandridore has begged our aid in securing the city, and expelling the intruders. You will all have received instructions: follow them. We are not coming home until Farringale is restored to peace and sovereignty.’

‘We?’ I ventured, and heard the question echoed around me by several other voices.

‘We,’ repeated Milady, ringingly, and then added, in a softer tone: ‘I am coming with you.’

‘I must have misheard,’ I said to Zareen. ‘She can’t have said—’

‘She did.’ Zareen pointed. ‘She’s here.’

I couldn’t see what she meant, at first: only a wall of people crowded near the doors, Jay among them. But a space was clearing there, people drawing back, away from something I couldn’t see.

No. Away from someone. I don’t know if Milady arranged it herself, or someone else did, but a shaft of golden light beamed down from somewhere above, illuminating the diminutive—very diminutive—form of a person I’d never seen before.

She stood a foot tall, if that. In fact, she hovered, for at her back fluttered a pair of gossamer wings, a blur of pale colour and light. Her hair was a white cloud about her face; that face both aged and ageless, for she was not, could never have been human.

That, at least, did not surprise me. I had long imagined her as, possibly, troll; the hints of her connections with the Troll Courts, and with Farringale, had been plentiful. But this, I could never have guessed.

Understanding dawned, like a brick to the face. ‘Giddy gods,’ I breathed. ‘She’s Mab.’ Not Mab in the same way that I was Merlin—a modern avatar of an ancient power. She was older, far older, than I could ever have suspected, for she was Mab herself, the Mab of legend and of myth.

She’d spoken, once, of feelings which had sent her into the heart of our House for comfort, as I had done: I myself once spent two days complete in this very room, quite alone. She had been offered her current role, she’d said, and did not know whether to accept.

I, full of my own concerns, had assumed she had meant a role like mine: a role like Merlin. That she was an archetype, like me, and the Baroness Tremayne. But she’d never confirmed that.

She had been speaking of her role as Milady. As the Society’s leader. Her other role—Mab—was no role at all: just her.

‘Giddy gods,’ I managed, near prostrated with awe. No wonder she had so many connections—so much rare knowledge—so many secrets. ‘Zar. Am I dreaming?’

‘We all are,’ she answered. ‘We’ve been dreaming her dream for years. We’re a part of it.’

Milady, with effortless stage presence, held her pose long enough for the rising chatter to peak, and die away again. Then she said, with a soft smile on her ageless face: ‘Are we ready, then? Shall we go?’

We were; we went. Our rag-tag band of scholars, scientists, inventors, librarians, and magicians, led by mythical Mab, filed en masse out of the safe world of our beloved Home, and off to something horribly like war.

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 8

by

It took me altogether too long to remember a couple of things—which, I might as well add, would have been immediately apparent to Jay (not to mention Indira).

One: I was travelling with a small forest, yes, but said forest had one of the greatest libraries in the world dangling from its swaying branches.

Two: I might not have been similarly festooned with knowledge, but I did still have Mauf somewhere about my person.

‘Does anyone know the way to Mandridore?’ I’d said, not really expecting a response.

Response, however, there had been: an immediate susurration of rustling leaves—tree chatter—had gone up, with a babble of ancient, learnèd voices mixed up somewhere therein.

—thou’rt a fool; it is not westerly, thou hast the pages upside down—

—manner of nonsense is this. Ha! Mandridore! There is no such place, nor has ever been—

—past Mount Battle and over the River Winding—

And over the top of this babble, Mauf’s refined accents raised to a near roar: ‘My good tomes and volumes—my very dear lexicons and folios—WE are the greatest library this world has ever known. Such conduct is highly unbecoming of our situation in life.’

The chatter did not appreciably lessen, but Mauf went on, inexorably shouting over them: ‘IF you would be so good as to hold your tongues, all of you, I believe we may swiftly find our way to a resolution of Merlin’s little difficulty.’

I didn’t immediately recognise myself by the name Merlin—I required a moment’s reflection, for that—but it was clever of Mauf to use it. These ancient volumes could never have received any information about the Society, nor would they care; but Merlin, that was another matter. The books’ quarrelling stopped, became instead an excited babble in which that hallowed name, Merlin, was many times repeated.

‘Precisely,’ said Mauf, at a more decorous volume. ‘Merlin. Shall you now comport yourselves with some dignity?’

The books, duly shamed, fell largely silent, barring an occasional rustle of pages—and one, slightly disturbing giggle.

‘Thank you. Now then. Mandridore, as most of you will not know, is as Farringale once was: the great, and very grand home of Their Majesties, Queen Ysurra and King Naldran, noble heirs as they are to Their  Majesties Hrruna and Torvaston; seat of the Troll Court, and therefore, home to the current Great Library of Magick. And if you would like to be restored to your rightful places upon such august shelves, you will assist me in directing Merlin to the gates of Mandridore forthwith, and without further ado.’ Mauf paused, and added, ‘The next volume to giggle shall instead be cast into the nearest brackish stream.’

The giggling, mercifully, cut off with a choking sound.

‘Thank you. Now. Which among you contain maps of England?’

Several books piped up.

‘And which among you contain some manner of reference to the Old Roads of the Court?’

‘The what—’ I put in, but stopped as the answer occurred to me. The Troll Roads. He was talking about the magickal Ways I’d once or twice travelled over of late, usually with Baron Alban. ‘Oooh, that’s clever,’ I said instead.

Mauf radiated a quiet, smug pleasure. ‘Yes, it is. Do not worry, Miss Vesper. We shall have you in Mandridore in a trice.’

***

They did, as well. I was obliged to promise, later, that I would not say exactly how; such knowledge is for the rarefied few, and those tomes whose pages offer some useful clue will doubtless disappear very quickly into Mandridore’s protected archives.

I can only say that our little ambulatory forest was very soon in motion again, and it was not long before we were out of England Proper and sauntering joyously down the wide, rose-strewn boulevards that the trolls built long, long ago.

Had I been obliged to walk those Ways as myself, I would have tired in due time, for despite the Way-wending magicks infused into the white stones of those roads, the journey was a considerable one. I did not tire, though, as a tree; a tree has no muscles, that can grow weary with use. I was powered by magick, and not only my own: the fizzing, ferocious magick of over-burdened Farringale was in me still, and wafted me with the greatest ease all the way to Mandridore.

We caused rather a stir, let me tell you. It’s not every day an entire copse of English trees in full and varied leaf trundles en masse through the gilded gates of the Court Enclave. We accumulated curious followers as we went, and by the time we stopped outside the palace we had an entourage at least as large in number as we were.

Things became somewhat confused after that. I recall being ushered, by what means I know not, into the vast formal gardens that lie behind the palace, into which my arboreal fellows cheerfully dispersed. I must have dropped into a doze, I suppose, for such an excess of magick cannot help but weary a woman eventually.

I drifted out of slumber again to find myself parked in a quiet corner of the queen’s garden, flanked by fragrant orange trees, and with an ornate stone bench positioned under my eaves. Two people were seated upon it: the soft murmur of their conversation had woken me.

‘—most spectacular thing I’ve ever seen,’ Jay was saying. ‘I haven’t the slightest idea how she thought of it.’

‘She’s Ves,’ answered Alban. ‘Her mind works in mysterious ways.’

‘Turned the whole damned library into a forest and walked off with it.’ Jay was shaking his head. ‘Some damage to the building in the process, of course, but nothing the Court can’t fix.’

‘They won’t object to that. Not when Ves has brought them the entire lost library of Farringale.’

Not the entire library, I tried to say, without success: my leaves rustled frenetically, but no words emerged.

Both faces looked up into my branches. ‘Have another go,’ said Jay, laying a hand against my trunk.

I did, with much the same result.

‘I hope you aren’t planning to remain a tree forever,’ Alban said. ‘Not that you aren’t a splendid, majestic tree, of course.’

‘The very best of trees,’ Jay agreed. ‘But there’s a cup of tea with your name on it, Ves, and it’s getting cold.’

‘And a plate of pancakes,’ Alban added. ‘The enormous ones, with the fruit and the ice cream.’

I rustled a bit more, dropping a purple fruit into Jay’s lap, which burst juicily.

Jay looked at it in silence, then said to Alban: ‘It’s not the entire library. That’s probably what she’s worried about. Ancestria Magicka took some books before we could stop them.’

‘Excellent,’ said Alban, in an uncharacteristically grim tone. ‘Those books are lawfully the property of the Troll Court. We’ll prosecute them for theft.’

‘Later. The griffins need help first.’

Griffins? What was amiss with the griffins? My brain exploded with questions; several more fruits sprayed juice over the pristine gravel walk.

‘Maybe have those pancakes brought out here,’ Jay suggested. ‘Where she can see them.’

With careful intent and precise aim, I dropped a fruit on Jay’s head.

‘You’re welcome to do something terrible to me,’ Jay correctly interpreted, ‘but you’ll have to turn human again first.’

I sagged, my branches drooping. I’d love to turn human again, I told him (rustle, rustle).

Jay patted my trunk soothingly. ‘I know. But if you conquered the chair problem, you can do this, too.’

‘Chair problem?’ Alban queried.

Jay shook his head. ‘Best not to ask.’

***

They brought out the pancakes. And when those turned cold and congealed, another plate of pancakes—not to mention huge, troll-sized pots of tea. Jay and Alban sat with me for an hour straight, and then another, swapping stories of our escapades, reminding me of my human self.

I chafed under the delay, and so did they, I’m sure, though they hid it well. Something was gravely amiss with the griffins of Farringale; Ancestria Magicka had got away with a lot of the library’s books; who-knew-what other mischief was brewing; and I was stuck in the shape of a tree.

Trying to perform difficult, unfamiliar magicks under a sense of intense pressure isn’t my preferred way of doing things.

At length—at very great length—my bark softened and became cloth; my leaves and withies dissolved into jade-green coloured hair; and I had eyes again, lips to talk with, arms to wrap around Jay and Alban in the hugest, bone-crushing bear hugs I (in my diminutive frame) could manage.

And questions. I had a lot of questions. ‘What do you mean about the griffins—thank you, by the way, for all this—this—but what’s afoot in Farringale—oh, did you find out what became of the regulators?—can we get the lost books back—’ I uttered all this in bursts, in between enormous gulps of tea (sweet, and milky), and forkfuls of pancake.

Jay apprised me, fairly succinctly, of the Griffin Problem, which made my blood boil with impotent rage. ‘Rob’s back at Home, updating Milady,’ he concluded. ‘I came here to find you, I hoped, and also to report to the Court. We’ll need help, at this point. We couldn’t take on all of Ancestria Magicka with just the two of us.’

Perhaps he’d read a certain mulish accusation in my face, for that last bit came out slightly defensive. ‘I know,’ I assured him. ‘I wish you could’ve, but—’

‘So do we,’ Jay said bleakly, and I saw what it must have cost him to walk away and leave those noble griffins in captivity.

‘Their Majesties are holding an emergency council soon,’ Alban told me, and checked his watch. ‘In about half an hour, in fact.’ I burst into speech, and he held up a hand to forestall me. ‘Your presence is required, don’t worry. We’ll need you and Jay to explain the situation at Farringale, and you’re to represent the Society while we debate how best to launch a sensible opposition.’

Sensible meaning: they couldn’t send many of their own people with us. No troll could safely enter Farringale, not yet. Maybe not ever.

But they were a large, cosmopolitan Enclave: they had people who weren’t trolls, and besides that they had some of the brightest minds in the country. We wouldn’t have to handle a problem of this magnitude alone.

‘That being so,’ I said, ‘I’d better fortify myself with plentiful comestibles. I’m hungry.’ In fact I was ravenous: a tree may thrive on sun and water alone, but I couldn’t.

Jay handed me another mug of tea, and downed the dregs of his own. ‘We’re as ready as milk and sugar can make us,’ he proclaimed.

Which, I hoped, would be enough.

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 4

by

An odd feeling, retracing the steps of our first (and at the time, secret) mission to Farringale. We were almost the same company again, missing only Alban; the journey through the Ways was the same, bringing us out on the same sun-dappled hilltop near Winchester. Even the season was the same: had it really been a year ago? A whole year! And yet, only a year. We might be the same team on the same mission, but we were not the same people.

I wasn’t the same Ves.

Nor was this mission conducted in the same exploratory spirit as before. Where previously I had felt excitement, curiosity, a twinge of guilt (see: aforementioned secret status), now we were tense and focused, prepared to encounter a very different Farringale. I scarcely noticed the vivid yellow-flowered shrubs, or the shimmering blue bowl of the sky. I went straight for my syrinx pipes, played a distracted melody thereupon: down came Adeline, for me and Jay to ride, and her larger, darker friend for Rob.

Jay, once rendered almost prostrate by the effort of carrying three or four people through the Ways, stood superbly composed and in control: not even the prospect of a horseback ride through the skies had the power to unsettle him now. How far we’ve come, I thought, with an odd twist of pride; a feeling I had no time to indulge or to share, for we were in a hurry. I paused only to touch noses with Addie before I mounted up, and Jay scrambled up behind me. Rob took the lead, a godlike figure enthroned upon stallion-back: I spared momentary wisp of pity for whoever had been so unwise as to mount a foray in Farringale. They were going to regret it.

Ten miles or so winged away in no time at all; ten miles of crisp, clear air, Addie’s velvet hide shimmering in the sunlight, and Jay a warm, comforting weight against my back.

Then we were spiralling down and down, alighting near Alresford, at the bridge over the River Alre. How sturdy, how dependable a construct, this thing of dark bricks and weathered stones: staunchly guarding the entrance to Farringale for hundreds of years, immoveable by time or mischief; untouched, and untouchable—

These high-blown musings upon time and change came to an abrupt end as Addie planted her four silvery hooves upon solid ground, and I got a closer look at the agèd bridge.

Not so untouchable after all, and not untouched. It’s the type of bridge that looks like half a small castle: built from pale grey stone in great, heavy blocks, with a handsome pointed arch spanning the river beneath. It’s been there for eight hundred years, probably, and you’d think nothing could touch it, but something had.

That majestic arch lay shattered in several pieces, each one as large as my entire body. The back half of the bridge had crumbled, fallen in, lay blocking the river; water was forming a new path around the obstacle, split into a streaming fork. It was as though the hand of some kind of god had smashed it in a fit of pique: a single, stunning blow, and an irreplaceable piece of architectural history lay in ruins.

I stared at the devastation, too numb with shock to think, let alone speak. ‘Who—’ I began, but words failed me. I felt a tear spill down one cheek; more in anger than grief, though surely some of both.

Who could have committed an act of such wanton destruction? Who could have so little respect for history, for heritage, for art—

I’d forgotten Farringale, for a moment. I was recalled to duty by Rob’s grim pronouncement: ‘Well. We know how they got in.’

‘What?’ I looked up, away from the tumbled mess of stone and time. ‘But—just destroying the bridge shouldn’t open the gate, surely. It should make it inaccessible.’

‘I know it should,’ Rob agreed. ‘But it hasn’t.’

I saw what he meant. A nimbus of light hung somewhere under the remains of the bridge, a light I recognised: we’d passed through it before. On the other side lay Farringale.

Whatever they had done, it hadn’t been a physical act of destruction. The bridge had been wrecked by magick, and whoever had done it had hacked the gate open by the same means. A vicious, brutal, graceless stroke, committed by one whose only goal was to get inside, and hang the consequences.

Jay was already on his phone, talking in crisp, short sentences to someone from the Society. ‘—completely wrecked—gate’s clearly accessible—seriously urgent—’

I stepped nearer to the destroyed gate, my stomach flipping with alarm. Baroness Tremayne had talked of many intruders, too many to count, but hearing about it at some distance was one thing: seeing the evidence of this savage incursion was quite another. This was an invasion indeed, the destroyed bridge the kind of collateral damage inflicted by a hostile army.

‘Shit,’ I whispered, my head spinning. Farringale was in deep trouble.

Rob had been quiet for some minutes. At last he said: ‘This is much more serious than we anticipated. I’m half inclined to abort mission. Come back with greater numbers.’

I saw his point. We were woefully overmatched. But on the other hand—

‘We aren’t here to try to remove these people, yet,’ I reminded him. ‘We’re here to get a clear picture of the situation, so we can counter them more effectively later. What are we going to tell Milady, if we walk away now? We’ve learned almost nothing.’

‘Ves, there are three of us. Three, against—’ He waved a hand illustratively at the destroyed bridge, unable to specify precisely what the three of us faced.

And it was that very vagueness that worried me. ‘We’ve got to learn more,’ I argued. ‘Who are these people? What do they want with Farringale? Giddy gods, how did they get past the griffins? If we’re to have the slightest hope of besting them then we’ve got to answer these questions.’

Rob gave me one of his grim looks. I don’t mind admitting that it is a little intimidating. ‘And how do you propose we proceed? We’ll be spotted as soon as we step through that portal.’

‘Not necessarily.’

Rob stared at me, waiting. Unimpressed.

‘Did I never tell you how I first met Baroness Tremayne?’

‘Not in any great detail, no.’

‘She was—she doesn’t exist in the real world, precisely.’ I held up a hand as he made to object. ‘Yes, I know she does; we saw her, not long ago. But she’s ancient, Rob. She’s hundreds of years old. She’s survived by existing outside of our reality, for the most part. She calls it between the echoes. I was in there with her, for a bit. It’s like—you can’t be seen by anyone outside of it, not even if you’re standing right next to them. She can pull us in, she’s done it before, and we can sneak around as much as we need to.’

A light of interest dawned in Rob’s dark eyes, and I knew I had him. ‘Are you sure?’ he said, ever the health and safety manager. ‘There’s no danger?’

‘There’s probably some,’ I admitted. ‘But not much.’

Rob’s mouth twitched in a smile, mostly suppressed. ‘Right,’ he said.

‘It’s too much to hope for no danger. I mean, when was the last time that happened?’

He answered with a shrug, or perhaps he was merely rolling his powerful shoulders, preparing for action.

Jay appeared at my elbow. ‘They’re sending some people to have a look at the bridge situation,’ he informed us.

‘We can’t wait for them,’ I said. ‘There’s no time to be lost. Who knows what they’re doing to Farringale while we’re dithering out here.’

‘I told them we can’t wait,’ Jay agreed. ‘This mess is out of our hands. That mess—’ he pointed at the portal—‘is entirely our problem.’

Right. I squared my shoulders, too, a smaller, feistier version of Rob. ‘I’ll go in first,’ I said.

Both men looked at me, and I could see questions and objections crystallising in their faces.

I held up a hand. ‘Hear me out. I know I said the baroness will help us, but we’ve got to reach her first. And you’re right, if we waltz straight through we’ll probably be spotted immediately.’ I wondered how Baroness Tremayne had got in and out, presumably without being observed. But she was a griffin. She had other, skyborne pathways. ‘I expect Milady told her where we’d be going in. She’ll be waiting for us nearby. So I’ll just—Merlin in, and let her know we’re here.’

‘Merlin in,’ Jay said.

‘Yes.’

‘I wasn’t aware that “Merlin” was a verb.’

‘If that’s an oblique way of asking me how I propose to accomplish this feat, I can only tell you: accidentally, via means I can neither anticipate nor plan for.’

I saw the escapade of the Fairy Stone pass behind Jay’s eyes, not to mention the episode with the chair. ‘This is—haphazard,’ he objected.

‘I know.’

‘Disorganised, uncertain, chaotic, and therefore dangerous.’

‘That’s me,’ I agreed.

He smiled in spite of himself. ‘I meant dangerous to you.’

‘Do you have a better idea?’ I hated to challenge him with the deal-breaking what-else-would-you-suggest manoeuvre, it’s crude. But we were not furnished with a great many options, nor with a great deal of time in which to laboriously reject most of them.

Jay didn’t like it either. His smile vanished into grimness: his stare was flinty. ‘If you get killed,’ he said ominously, ‘I’ll—’

‘Get Zareen to wake me up just so you can kill me again,’ I finished for him.

‘No. I’ll mourn you for the rest of my life.’ It was said very seriously, with real feeling.

Ouch. That hit me where it hurts. ‘I promise,’ I said, really meaning it. ‘I’ll be careful as pie.’

‘As pie? Careful as pie? Pies are easy but I never heard they were careful—Ves!’

While he was busy muddling his way through my very mixed simile, I was off, striding for that beckoning nimbus of light with all the courage I couldn’t quite muster. I’d spoken with outrageous certainty, as though I had any real control over these accidental brilliancies of mine. I hadn’t been trying to turn into a Fairy Stone, or a chair either; what made me think I could accidentally-on-purpose stealth my way into Farringale via some mysteriously mystical means, and without getting caught?

Only the fact that I’d lucked or catastrophised my way into—and out of—a lot of interesting situations already. And that was before someone had been mad enough to make a Merlin of me.

This jumble of doubts and hopes drained away as I neared the portal, for I was assailed by a—by a deep, shimmering, compelling awareness of it, and of the land beyond, that briefly shocked me into immobility. This certainly hadn’t happened before. My senses were awash with magick, and with Farringale: the scents and sights of its golden-paved streets and overgrown gardens; water, fresh and chill, or sharply, greenly stagnant; the mulch of old earth, the perfume of spring roses—those damned roses were everywhere—I inhaled, closing my eyes, and I could almost see the winding streets, the grand boulevards, the timber-framed townhouses. That sky. That sky, twilight-coloured and roiling with angry, devastating, glorious golden clouds.

Warmth wreathed my limbs, a warmth that came—I thought—from the light itself. The gentle warmth of an afternoon in early summer, like bathing in liquid sunshine.

I felt no movement; there was no sensation of passage. Time passed, and I knew, in some distant way, that I had gone out of England, and into Farringale; that I was a part of it, like a tree rooted in the deep earth; like a stream rushing, bubbling through grassy banks; like a rose, petals unfurled to drink in the sun.

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 3

by

I know this may seem hard to believe but I am actually the very soul of discretion, most of the time.

Not that my new status as the current Merlin is a secret, exactly. But I haven’t broadcast it to the far corners of the earth (or, at least, the Society), and neither have my nearest and dearest. I’d like to hang on to my identity, I suppose: I’m Ves, most of all.

That being so, I had no intention of instantly spreading the news of Milady’s secret identity all through the House (or Baroness Tremayne’s, either). In fact, I was incredibly restrained; I told absolutely no one at all.

Well: no one except for Val, anyway. Sort of.

ALERT, read the text I sent her the second I was at liberty. Code reddest of RED: urgent information requisition. What have you got on Morgan le Fay and Queen Mab?

Note that I didn’t say why I was asking. I felt quite proud of myself.

OH! Came Val’s response. Been wondering about that for the LONGEST time.

SUSPICIONS CONFIRMED.

Stand by: information overload incoming.

I didn’t ask her which suspicions, or to whom they pertained. I didn’t dare.

So much for subtlety.

Morgan le Fay. Said to be one of the most powerful enchantresses in British history. Connections to the supposed King Arthur, etc. Unlike the aforementioned probably did exist in some form—known archetype but hasn’t been heard of in ages and I mean literal ages, Ves.

Trust Val to text in words of several syllables.

Known or at least reputed powers: shape-shifting, especially into animal forms. Also illusions, famously castles-in-the-air or like mirages.

I filed those thoughts away: maybe there’d be something we could use.

Mab: info sparse, Val went on. Famously mentioned in Shakespeare; facility with dreams implied; once monarch of a now defunct faerie kingdom.

Mention in same bracket with Morgan suggests subjects related?? Never heard of Mab as an archetype but could be. Would explain a lot.

I hastily wrote back. I don’t know what you mean nothing is explained I’m explaining nothing.

Lol, said Val, most uncharacteristically. I took this unusual utterance to be expressive of profound sarcasm.

Nothing to see here, move along, I returned, and put my phone away before I could compromise myself—or Milady—any further.

I’m practiced at packing light and packing fast, and these days—to Ornelle’s relief—I don’t tend to need much from Stores. I was ready to go in under an hour, buzzing with energy and alarm, and with nothing to do but wait for go time.

I went out to the Glade.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried it, but nothing soothes the spirit like a tranquil hour or two in a magickal grove littered with unicorns. Extra points for being One with the Horn Squad yourself. I was feeling rattled when I came in, head all awhirl, nerves on highest alert; not the ideal state in which to undertake a top secret mission of the greatest importance. I needed the prismatic calm of a mountain lake, especially if I was going to have to go in there and Merlin all over the place. People expect more from the living embodiment of the most famous wizard in Britain than they do from a mere, common-or-garden Ves (including me).

An hour or so of sweet, juicy grass, dulcet spring sunshine, and (inevitably) fragrant roses and I more or less had it. Serene, smooth waters, fathomlessly blue. Doves cooing peacefully as rose-stained dawn breaks over a softly rippling meadow. The unearthly tones of panpipes at—

‘VES!’

My head shot up, several half-chewed stems of grass falling out of my gaping jaw. That was—that was not Jay, that was another male voice, a familiar one—I was off at a gallop before I’d even finished the thought, and so much for the mountain lake.

Baron Alban stood at the mouth of my sacred glade, inflating his lungs in preparation for another earth-shattering bellow. I ran at him full-tilt and planted my nose into his massive chest, almost knocking him over (and with a person of Alban’s stature this is no mean feat).

‘Oof,’ declared he, grabbing my face. He planted a smacking kiss on my nose, and glowered at me: a confusing combination. ‘I’m here to deliver a key,’ he informed me as I went questing through the pockets of his jacket (I could smell baked goods somewhere in there, I swear). ‘Which means I’m here to dispatch you on a mission of probable danger and I can’t go with you.’

Alban had been part of our first, only minorly disastrous mission to Farringale. It could have been catastrophic: Alban could have fallen prey to the ortherex, the malignant creatures infesting the depths of Farringale (and several other Troll enclaves). They were deadly; they’d have eaten Alban alive, if we had been unlucky.

We wouldn’t—couldn’t—risk that again.

‘I wish you could come with us, too,’ I informed him, though little of it emerged past my equine teeth.

Alban patted my neck. ‘I would understand you better if you were Ves-shaped. Just saying.’

I felt a curious reluctance to step out of my glade, my sanctuary. Once I did, I was committed—off to Farringale, and whatever fresh disaster awaited us there. Off to wield some of the most ancient and powerful magick in the country, in one of the most ancient and powerful magickal courts in the country, and try desperately not to mess it all up.

Courage, Ves.

I took a deep, whinnying breath, and stepped over the invisible threshold of the glade. The moment I did so, the transformation began: within a few shuddering, uncomfortable seconds I was myself again, with arms as well as legs, and fabulous hair.

The hug I immediately received was, I felt, recompense enough. It was engulfing.

‘Mmf,’ I said against Alban’s grey silk shirt.

‘Sorry.’ He eased the pressure of his massive arms, and I could breathe again.

‘It may sound shockingly ungrateful,’ I told him, ‘but I wish just a little bit that I’d got Morgan’s magick rather than Merlin’s. The Baroness showed up as a griffin, Alban. A griffin! And flashed out of it again easy as pie. Imagine that.’

‘Ves, two minutes ago you were an actual unicorn. Four legs, horn, everything.’

‘I know. Exactly. That only happens when I step into the glade, and fades again as soon as I step out. And I’m only ever a unicorn. I have no control over it.’ I indulged myself in a few moments of green-eyed envy, picturing myself soaring over the land upon the wings of a creature of legend.

‘Surely you’ve accomplished something equally marvellous as Merlin?’ said Alban, proving himself as superb a diplomat as ever.

‘This morning I turned myself into a chair,’ I concurred. ‘That’s not nothing.’

‘A chair.’ Alban twinkled at me, wordlessly.

‘I didn’t mean to,’ I admitted. ‘I haven’t really got the hang of this Merlin thing.’ Merlin’s magick seemed to be of the land: the magick of tree and stone, of air and water, and the vastness of it appalled me almost as much as the poeticism of it enchanted me. I probably needed a solid decade of practice before I could call myself a creditable Merlin—if then.

‘You’ll be marvellous,’ Alban replied, apparently reading my thoughts.

I put away my anxious face, replacing it with a set expression of firm resolve. ‘Marvellous or not, I’ve got to go.’

He nodded, and dug a hand into a pocket in his trousers. The keys, when he handed them to me, were blissfully cool against my hot fingers: thoughts of that serene lake returned. They were gold and bronze, exquisitely worked, and set with rubies and emeralds: the fanciest of fancy. Typical of the Troll Court. ‘I half expected to hear they’d been stolen,’ I told Alban, tracing a finger over a glimmering ruby.

‘I don’t know how these intruders got into Farringale, but it wasn’t with the keys,’ Alban confirmed.

I sighed, and carefully vanished the keys into an air-pocket: Indira’s trick. It’d taken me much longer to master it than I liked to admit, and I might never have been able to do it at all without Merlin’s magick. ‘I’ll take the best care of them,’ I said.

‘And of yourself, too, please.’

I nodded. ‘Always. All right, here I go.’ I dropped a hasty kiss on Alban’s cheek, flashed a beaming, confident smile, and took off at a run for the House.

***

Jay and Rob were already waiting for me. I found the pair of them in the cellar, pacing in circles around the Way-henge House keeps for our resident Waymaster’s particular use. Jay displayed a key for me the moment I stepped in: wrought silver and gleaming sapphire-blue: the third key we needed to open the gate into Farringale, the one House has in its keeping.

‘I’ve got the other two,’ I told him. ‘Alban just brought them.’

Jay nodded. He was tense and terse, barely speaking: I was oddly reassured to learn that it wasn’t just me feeling the pressure.

Rob, though, smiled at me. I was even more reassured by his presence, and it’s partly because he’s a big, visibly capable man, the exact sort you’d like to have around if there’s trouble in the offing. But he’s also the collected type, radiating calm and cool, and I breathed a little easier in consequence. ‘All set?’ he asked me.

I patted my satchel. It wasn’t as burstingly full as it used to be, my need for paraphernalia being somewhat diminished. But it held an article of supreme importance: Gallimaufry, or Mauf, our semi-sentient encyclopaedia of everything. We had acquired the book from Farringale in the first place (or its predecessor: Mauf was a clever copy). I didn’t know for sure that we would need his extraordinary reserves of knowledge, but it never hurts to have a know-it-all along, now does it? ‘I’ve got two magickal keys and one remarkably well-mannered tome,’ I informed Rob. ‘All set.’

‘Then we’re going,’ said Jay, in a tone one doesn’t argue with. But he squeezed my fingers when I took his hand, a note of affection I very much welcomed.

‘Wait, we’re forgetting Baroness Tremayne,’ I pointed out.

Jay shook his head. ‘She’s already gone back. Griffin shape. She’s waiting for us.’

Right. Great. I stayed quiet as he mustered the Winds of the Ways: he’s well practiced at it by now, but it seems a delicate process. A strong breeze circled about the henge, tossing my hair; the world began to turn around me; I shut my eyes.

A vast, slightly sickening whoosh, and we were gone.

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 1

by

At Home in Yorkshire (or Derbyshire, one is never so impolitic as to specify), spring is, at last, springing, and deliciously. I don’t know whether House is celebrating something, but there are early roses everywhere, and most of them are pink. The air smells like heaven; I’ve taken to leaving my bedroom window open all the time, though it’s only April. It’s warm enough.

Over the course of the winter, two possibilities have emerged:

Either the voices behind the wallpaper are holding an interminable greengrocer’s market, or—

I am, at last, going quite mad.

If I sit, as I often do, on the floor in some out-of-the-way corner of the House, with my face pressed inelegantly to the wall and my eyes closed, I can hear….something. Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb, says somebody. Several somebodies.

I mentioned this to Jay, once or twice (which was brave, wasn’t it? If anyone is going to imagine me stark raving bonkers I’d rather, above all, that it wasn’t Jay). He didn’t seem appalled so much as… tired. ‘Oh?’ said he, mildly enough. ‘Is this to be the beginning of another whirlwind magickal adventure?’

I don’t know that he was ecstatic at the prospect, which is fair enough. It isn’t so long since I contrived to drag him into a dance-off with a horde of the unquiet undead, and a man doesn’t get over a thing like that in a hurry. ‘I don’t know,’ I answered, honestly enough. ‘They really do seem to be talking about comestibles.’

‘Comestibles,’ Jay echoed. ‘There are voices in the walls and they’re talking about provender.’

He said this with a certain flatness in his tone, and a hint of the wary side-eye. Bad signs. ‘Rhubarb, mostly,’ I hastened to assure him. ‘Nothing particularly bizarre.’

‘Very reassuring,’ agreed Jay. ‘No one has ever launched a bloody rebellion over fruits and vegetables, but confectionery, now. That would be a different matter entirely.’

I nodded enthusiastically. ‘Who among us hasn’t at least thought about it, occasionally? Let’s overthrow the government and install the Pastry Queen.’

‘Armies of ladyfingers and eclairs,’ Jay concurred. ‘Brutally efficient, and really rather sweet about it.’

‘No, but really,’ I persevered. ‘That is what it sounds like.’

Jay attempted no further remonstrance. I suppose, given everything that has occurred of late, the notion that there are voices chatting behind the wallpaper and they’re partial to summer fruits isn’t particularly strange. ‘Let me know if there’s any mention of cucumbers,’ he said, wandering off. ‘Then we should definitely be concerned.’

There hasn’t been, that I’ve been able to discern. Just the rhubarb.

The thing is that I’ve learned how to listen, and I mean really listen. It’s part of being the new Merlin. Even rocks have something to say for themselves, if you can catch the trick of their language. Houses, now: houses have a lot going on.

And our beloved House is a positive hive of industry and conversation, if only I could catch the trick of that language. I can’t, quite, and I’m convinced House is doing it on purpose.

I began this morning in fruitless (so to speak) communion with the ladies and gentleman behind the wallpaper, as I too often do; parked, this time, in the first-floor common room, cross-legged upon the floor by the window and with my face pressed to the wainscot.

Rhubarb rhubarb, whispered someone.

The fine folk of the Society have ceased to question me on this behaviour, which can only mean I am developing a reputation for such eccentricity there is no further use in even trying to understand me. I can’t say that I mind. Where’s the fun in being the living embodiment of Albion’s most ancient magick if you can’t be battier than a belfry at Halloween?

Today’s adventures progressed, shall we say. The process of deep-listening to the land (as Ophelia, previous caretaker of Merlin’s magick, would have it), is delightfully mindful: I sit and breathe and listen and absorb until I am one with the world around me. Not quite literally, although sometimes very literally, and in this case—

Rhubarb rhubarb, the voices uttered, tantalisingly just beyond the range of clear hearing, and I pressed my face closer to the wall with eyes closed and mind very much on another plane of reality; listened to our beloved House in its every feature: the gentle creak of its timbers, the wordless steadiness of its stones; the warm, spring breeze wafting through its open windows; the rattle and clatter of its occupants, busily engaged with the nothings and somethings of the day. I felt myself sinking, by slow degrees, melding my consciousness with that of the House until I could almost have been one of those voices behind the wallpaper; I could almost reach them, almost distinguish real, whole verbiage—there were words in the midst of the garble—I had only to stretch a fraction farther and I’d have it—

A sense of sudden pressure assailed me, fracturing my concentration. A weight, resting heavily upon me, stopping my breath: I twitched, and then heaved.

The pressure lifted; somebody uttered a surprised syllable.

Then I heard my name.

‘Ves!’ said the somebody, and as my consciousness separated from the House and drifted slowly back into its rightful spot I realised that it was Jay. ‘Ves, is that you? What the—’

I stretched, or tried to. My limbs did not cooperate; seemed, in fact, to be warped into some unfamiliar configuration; I shook myself mightily.

Jay thumped my head, or what had taken the place of my head: it came to me, dimly, that I had developed upholstery.

‘Ves,’ Jay said again, impatient now. ‘This is ridiculous, even for you.’ Rather irritable, for Jay: I detected in the irascible words a strong note of concern.

‘To be fair,’ I uttered, manifesting vocal chords from somewhere, ‘this isn’t as bad as it could have been.’ I referred, of course, to a prior escapade, in which I had turned myself (inadvertently, I hasten to add) into a large rock; a Fairy Stone, to be precise; an object so impervious to human interference that I might, were I unlucky, have remained in said shape eternally.

‘Come out of that,’ Jay said severely. ‘Or I’ll be forced to sit on you again.’

‘You wouldn’t!’

‘You’re an exquisitely comfortable armchair.’

I felt obscurely pleased by this tribute. ‘Exquisitely! No, am I really?’

‘The living replica of my own, very favourite chair, except for the general purpleness of you. A discrepancy I might have noticed sooner, were I not very absorbed in this treatise on Yllanfalen architecture.’

Ooh. ‘I want to read that,’ I said, instantly.

‘It’s just arrived. Your mother sent it over.’ Jay, curse him, was smug.

My mother—being the current queen of an ancient Yllanfalen kingdom (don’t ask)—has access to all sorts of delicious intellectual goodies, though I usually have to twist her arm rather hard before she’ll share them.

Of course, if I wanted to read anything ever again, I’d have to stop being a chair first.

‘Jay,’ I said in a small voice.

‘Yes.’

‘I think I’m stuck.’

‘Do you want me to fetch Zareen?’

I never did learn exactly what Zar had done to me, on the occasion of the Fairy Stone debacle. I only knew that it had hurt, even when I was a slab of rock. ‘No,’ I said hastily. ‘I can do this.’

Jay waited. He did a creditable job of appearing coolly unconcerned by my plight, like a man whose confidence in my capacity to get myself out of the absurd fixes I get myself into can only be described as “boundless”. But I can detect an aura of supreme, if suppressed, tension from a hundred paces, even as a chair.

‘I’ll be all right,’ I told him.

 ‘I’d be glad if you could demonstrate that in more tangible fashion. Fairly soon.’

‘Is that Jay-speak for “I’d like to hug you so tight you can’t breathe?”’

‘I might crack a rib. Possibly two.’

An enticing prospect. Hm.

If I’d thought myself into an involuntary oneness with the House, surely I could think myself into a voluntary restoration of Self. I could start with that purpleness Jay had mentioned, my favourite colour; the moment I was Ves again I’d switch my hair to something vivaciously violet. I thought about cuddling Goodie, the unipup; the soft, velvet feel of Adeline’s gorgeously equine nose; my best dress, and – of course – the relatively new, but perfectly delightful sensation of being wrapped in the arms of Jay.

And when that didn’t work, I went on to hot chocolate – the kind Milady served in silver pots, if she was pleased with me; to stacks of pancakes with ice cream; to laughing with Jay over some trifling joke, and the thunderous expression on Val’s face if she thought I might have dog-eared a page in one of her precious tomes (and I would never).

‘Jay,’ I said, in an even smaller voice. ‘I really am stuck.’

‘Okay,’ he said, with forced calm. ‘Wait one moment, I’ll get help—’

I didn’t have time to prevent him from dashing away (don’t leave me, the small, frightened part of my soul pleaded). I was kicked; not physically but psychically, somehow; as though some obliging, never to be enough revered personage had delivered a swift clout to the insides of my brain; and there, I had eyeballs again, and hands, and limbs with which to cling (a little shamefully) to Jay.

‘What happened,’ said he against my hair.

I attempted a breath, and achieved a slight one; he hadn’t been joking about the cracked ribs, quite. ‘I think—I think House helped me,’ I managed; and at the back of my mind, as though uttered from a great distance away, came the immortal words: Rhubarb, rhubarb.

Thank you, I responded, and added, for good measure: strawberry, strawberry.

‘This Merlin thing,’ said Jay, without in the slightest degree loosening his grip on me. ‘Are you sure you’re getting it right? I mean, legend says he was capable of shape-shifting, but he tended to choose useful things, like birds. Never heard anything about chairs.’

A fair question.

All the inherited wealth that is Merlin’s ancestral magick was now mine entirely (until I chose to retire, and pass it on). Ophelia had deemed me ready a month or so prior—or perhaps she had simply grown weary of carrying it all around herself; it is no inconsiderable burden.

I wasn’t ready, of course. We’d both known that. But no one’s ever ready, not really; not for the thorny, meaty, complex challenges of life. One merely throws oneself in, and manages, somehow—or hovers on the bank for eternity, never quite mustering up the nerve to step off.

I was managing, sort of. And I still had Tuesdays with Ophelia; I’d ask her about the Chair Debacle next time—

My train of thought ended there, for Jay had gone tense again—was positively rigid with it, it was like cuddling an ironing board—‘What’s the matter?’ I prompted.

‘There’s a—’ He stopped.

I poked him in the ribs: no response.

I tried, then, to withdraw myself from the circle of his arms, but that proving ineffectual, I turned us both about, so I was facing the window, and he had his back to it.

A familiar, placid scene met my searching gaze: the prismatic green lawn that is House’s pride and joy stretching away to a horizon clustered with old oaks, one or two of my esteemed Society colleagues strolling about upon it; those roses, roses everywhere, in a thousand shades of pink and peach; the vast, fathomless expanse of the sky soaring above, lightly streaked with wafts of drifting cloud—

And a shape there, a shadow, a distant winged form coming closer—

Jay released me and spun, visibly shaking himself. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s odd, but for a minute there I thought I saw—’

‘Griffin,’ I croaked.

‘Yes, I thought I saw a griffin, but that can’t possibly be…’

We fell into a mutual silence, for the dark little silhouette bombed over our beloved old oaks and shot towards the lawns: and there could be no mistaking it, as the seconds passed, no mistaking it at all. We had seen these before, these glorious, majestic beings, the kings and queens of mythical creatures, in undisputed possession of lost Farringale; had declined absolutely to tangle with them, unless obliged; and now here—here came one of them, at speed.

Episode 11

Dancing and Disaster: 19

by

My errand was of a peculiar nature. It related to employing my Merlin magick at Home, in ways that hadn’t occurred to me to do before. Ophelia had only loaned me that power, but she had made no move to take it back, yet. We’d agreed on a week, so I had time.

And I had questions. Lots of them. I’d had questions ever since I had joined the Society, of course; everyone did. But I’d learned a lot since then, and I finally had an idea about the nature of our Home and how it worked.

And that being so, I was curious, so I had to test it. Right? Who could possibly resist temptation like that?

It couldn’t be done just anywhere, though. I made my way, slowly and uncertainly, through the winding corridors of our beloved and enormous House, and after wrong turns aplenty (even superpowered, I still have to be me), I found myself at the door to House’s favourite room.

I knocked.

‘Dear House. I know it is a trifle rude to arrive uninvited and unannounced, but this is important. Would you be so kind as to let me in?’

Silence.

Then, a click. The door had unlocked.

I turned the handle, and went in.

The room stood quiet and empty. I closed the door behind me, and took a seat on one of the upholstered ivory chairs. A fire flared to life in the grate, and a comforting warmth began to permeate the October chill in the air.

I sat in comfortable silence for a while, enjoying the ambience of the parlour. The grandfather clock tick-tocked to itself in the corner, a peaceful sound, and I began to relax.

The portrait of the troll lady in court dress was still there, above the chair Emellana had lately occupied. I studied it more closely than I’d had occasion to do before. She was of Emellana’s age, I judged: fairly elderly, but still spry. Her gown was an extravagant blue velvet creation, seventeenth-century in style, with a wealth of lace and ruffles and jewels. She was a court lady, no doubt about it. But: which court?

I looked around at the rest of the paintings. There were five more: two depicting figures in seventeenth-century dress, one male, black and Yllanfalen, one female, white and human. Another showed a young man with dark brown skin wearing the plain garb of an eighteenth-century tradesman. The final two depicted a little girl in a plain white Edwardian dress, and an elderly, blue-eyed lady in an eighteen-thirties day dress and sun bonnet.

The child’s portrait didn’t fit my theory, but the rest just might. My gaze lingered in particular on the older lady in the sun bonnet.

I closed my eyes. Time to listen; time to feel. I’d connected with the odd, old house at Silvessen in deeper ways than I’d ever connected with anything before; could I do the same at Home?

I sat there enveloped in near silence, breathing deeply, listening to every slight sound that reached my senses. The tick, tick of the clock. The soft crackle of flames in the hearth. I breathed in the dust of hundreds of years with every inhalation; I felt the softness of carpet under my feet and silk under my hands, a cold wind in my eaves, the chatter of birds sheltering from the weather somewhere under my roof. A comfortable babble of voices, the warmth of many bodies gathered under my embrace. The odd cocktail of smells from the kitchens, from the lab, from the surrounding woods and fields.

A knock came softly from somewhere; a door opened in response, and closed again. Not the parlour. Somewhere farther off.

I gathered my strength, and pushed gently against the door that had just closed.

It opened again.

‘Sorry,’ I gasped, surprised, and retreated, slamming the door behind myself again.

There was a pause.

‘Hello?’ I said into the silence.

I felt a palpable surprise exceeding even my own. Then a questing, curious touch on my senses, all my senses: they were exploring me.

‘I come in peace,’ I offered. ‘I’m just— interested. In who you are.’

An answer came, finally. Merlin, uttered a voice in the depths of my mind. It has been a long time.

‘I’m only a new Merlin,’ I explained. ‘Brand new. I’ve been here at the Society for a while, though.’

We know you, Cordelia Vesper.

We. That tallied with my suspicions.

I felt a rising excitement, and had to take a breath. Focus, Ves. Don’t get overexcited and ruin everything. ‘May I know who I am addressing? Are these your portraits?’

The faces we once wore are here commemorated, answered the voice. They are but echoes, now.

‘Memories,’ I supplied.

Yes.

Time for the million-pound question.

‘You recognise me as Merlin. Is that because you are archetypes, too?’

A fresh wave of surprise. Not now, came the answer.

‘Former archetypes. And when you passed on the role, and passed away, you chose to remain here.’

Not all of us chose to remain. Some journeyed on.

I felt thrilled, the delight you get from solving a fiendishly difficult puzzle. For more than a decade, I’d wondered how House came to be so — animated. Everyone had. And now I finally had something like an answer.

The spirits of former archetypes resided here. They were haunting the House, after a fashion; the way the Greyer sisters had haunted their cottage after death, and the way the Yllanfalen women of Silvessen haunted the craggy old house on the edge of the town. Except, not like that. They didn’t linger out of bitterness and rage, and they hadn’t been enslaved. They were here because they had loved the House in life, and they chose to remain with it after death.

I thought of the painting of Cicily Werewode, the way some part of her spirit was bound into it. Probably some part of those arts was employed here, too. The people depicted were dead, and yet they weren’t; they lived on, their consciousness laced through canvas and oils, through brick and stone and tile. Bound to the House, and to each other, but bound in love, not hatred.

‘Greetings,’ I said brightly. ‘It’s an honour to meet you. Which archetype did you embody, if I may ask? Were you all the same archetype, at different times? Or different ones? Is it the same one Milady currently embodies?’

Too many questions. I knew it as I uttered them, but they poured out of me anyway. I was just so interested, and Milady was so maddeningly vague.

I felt a flicker of something like amusement. More than just a flicker. A wave of it, coming from everywhere at once.

So much curiosity, said a voice, and it felt like a different person speaking. An enquiring mind.

I hoped I wasn’t imagining the approval that came with the statement.

‘I have more,’ I offered. ‘Lots more.’

There followed a pause. Were they thinking? Don’t think, I silently pleaded. Just answer!

The next voice, though, was very recognisable to me. It sliced through my thoughts with enough force to give me a blinding headache. Ves. Leave this alone.

Milady.

Curses.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said quickly, and not altogether sincerely. ‘Can’t I ask?’

It is rude to pry, came Milady’s somewhat flabbergasting answer. Kindly remember your manners.

My manners?

I ground my teeth in silent frustration. I could see her point, more than I liked. I was poking and prying, trying to find my way through to secrets about Milady’s identity which she hadn’t chosen to share. I did not have that right.

Even so, it was maddeningly frustrating to have to leave it alone and back away. I was so close to solving the mystery!

I know, Ves, said Milady. It is very disappointing. But I remain unmoved.

I sighed, and relinquished the argument. I withdrew my senses from the dear old House, returning to the Ves I’d left behind: a pint-sized human with fabulous hair, slumped in an ivory silken chair. My limbs had gone dead in my absence; I shook life back into them, and took some care as I stood up.

I made a curtsey, to Milady and also to the various souls inhabiting the House. ‘Thank you for your time,’ I said, scrupulously polite. ‘I’ll show myself out.’

The door didn’t quite slam shut behind me, but it did lock in a manner I’d term decisive.

I wouldn’t be getting back into House’s favourite room any time soon.

***

My last errand for the day was of a less pleasant nature. As if bearing Milady’s disapproval (twice over) wasn’t enough, I was going to have to put up with my mother’s, too.

Oh well. I’d dropped myself in it, and had nobody else to blame.

I trailed back to my room, and picked up my phone.

Taking a deep breath, I dialled my mother’s number.

She picked up after the first ring, taking me by surprise. Normally she ignores my calls. ‘Cordelia. What do you want?’

‘Can’t I be calling just to say hel—’

‘Don’t bother. Get on with it.’

‘Right. Fair cop. I’ve got a problem.’

‘And?’

‘Well, to be accurate I’ve created a problem.’

‘And now you’re making it my problem.’

‘Sort of. A little bit. Are you disposed to help me or not?’

‘Depends what it is.’

So I launched into the Tale of the Dance Battle yet again, though I offered Mother a somewhat curtailed version.

Despite this, the silence when I’d finished was liberally flavoured with incredulity.

‘Yes, I know, I’m a complete screw-up,’ I said, before she could have a chance to say it herself.

‘Did it work?’

‘Well, it did. More or less.’

‘Then it wasn’t a screw-up, was it?’

‘Are you being supportive? Because I’m not sure I can take any more surprises today.’

‘Did we get to the part where you tell me what you want yet?’

‘Right. So Silvessen was probably an Yllanfalen town, and if we’re going to rebuild it sensitively then we need Yllanfalen aid.’

‘That can probably be arranged.’

‘And materials. Lots of those.’

That gave her pause. ‘I can’t just spirit up sufficient building materials to reconstruct an entire town, Ves.’

‘I know, but I’m stuck, so whatever you’ve got I’ll take.’

‘Noted. Oh, call your father.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Because it’s his birthday tomorrow.’

‘Right. I know stuff like that, of course, because I’ve had a long and rewarding relationship with him up until now.’

‘Also, he’s a stonemason.’

‘He’s what?’

‘Did you not hear me, or are you just being difficult?’

A stonemason. Whose birthday was tomorrow. I realised afresh how little I knew about my father. ‘I don’t have his number,’ I said.

‘I’ll send it. Tell him I told him to help you.’

‘Will that work?’

‘It will if he knows what’s good for him.’

She hung up.

A moment later, my phone buzzed with a message. Dad’s number unfurled across my screen.

All of this was rather unexpected. I took my time over saving his number to my contacts, and adding his name. Thomas Goldwell. Tom.

I was procrastinating, probably because I was nervous. He hadn’t seemed super pleased to learn of my existence before, and though I had given him my number the one time I’d met him, he had yet to call me.

That suggested he didn’t want anything to do with me, didn’t it?

Still. I wasn’t calling him to propose a happy family gathering. I was calling him to engage his professional services for Silvessen. Mostly.

The phone rang several times before he answered. ‘Hello?’

I swallowed a flutter of nerves, and pasted on a smile. ‘Hi. Thomas Goldwell? Tom? This is Cordelia Vesper. You might not remember me—’

‘Of course I do,’ he interrupted. ‘Adult women claiming a near relationship with me don’t show up every week.’

‘Right. Well, Dad, I have to tell you happy birthday. For tomorrow. Mum said so.’

‘Thank you.’

That seemed to be it, so I went on. ‘Also, I hear you’re a stonemason.’

‘I don’t practise the trade much any more, but I do have that skillset, yes.’

‘Okay. Then I’ve got a job for you.’

‘Oh?’

‘It’s important. We’re restoring an Yllanfalen town, and we need people with the right skills and insight.’

‘Interesting, but I’m busy.’

‘Also, Mum said you have to help me.’

‘She said what?’

‘I’ll quote: “Tell him I told him to help you, if he knows what’s good for him.” Those exact words.’

He might have sighed, or there might have been a passing gust of wind, I couldn’t be sure.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Tell me when and where.’

I was speechless with shock, too much to muster more than a strangled ‘thank you’ in reply.

He hung up on me without saying goodbye, demonstrating that he and my mother had at least one thing in common.

‘Great,’ I said into the phone. ‘See you soon.’

I put my phone away, uncertain as to the state of my feelings.

Mum was helping me out, and she hadn’t even argued that much.

And I would finally get to meet my dad again, even if he didn’t seem too excited about it.

Things among Family Ves were looking up. Vaguely. A little bit.

Sod it. If I didn’t need a husband, I didn’t need a mother or a father either. I’d managed just fine without those things.

Still, a girl can hope. Right?

Right.

And in the meantime, there’s Jay, who’s everything my family isn’t, and presently waiting to whisk me away to a dream dinner that I hadn’t even been able to scare him out of.

I dismissed my mountain of problems from my mind, opened my wardrobe and devoted myself to choosing a dress.

Enough work, Ves. Time to enjoy life a bit.