free fantasy serial

‘The Yllanfalen are a fine people, all told,’ my Father began. ‘Noble, enlightened, highly talented. But where there is power, there will always be those with a desire to seize it at any cost. So it was thirty years ago, when the old king passed and the time came for another to step into the role.

‘I’d travelled into the kingdom of Yllanfalen because I was a student of music at the time, and of magick. I wanted to develop the combined arts, and where better to do that? They are rightly legendary for their prowess at magickal melody and song. I knew nothing about the succession, and cared less. I just wanted to play.

‘And play I did, when my turn came around. What I did not know was that the lyre had been, by some means, corrupted, before it fell into my hands. Its ancient song no longer worked as intended. Instead of selecting a suitable monarch by its own judgement, it would simply bestow the crown on the next person to play it. It was meant to fall into other hands than mine; by some accident, I received it instead.

‘But it did not choose me, nor did I choose to accept the role. I didn’t want it. The night dissolved into chaos after that, for I was unpopular with everyone. She who had intended to take up the lyre and the monarchy both was furious with me, as you may imagine. The rest of the Yllanfalen were furious with us, too: me for being human, and the lyre for daring to install one over them as ruler.

‘They declared the lyre broken, and me an exile. Well, I was happy to go! I tried to leave the lyre with the effigy of old King Evelaern on the hill, but I couldn’t, somehow. So I threw it into the water. I found that the sprites were minded to obey me; exile I might be, but I was still the king by their law. So they took me home, and… I have never been back there since.’

I digested all this in silence for a moment. ‘So when they said the king had passed, they meant they’d thrown him out.’

‘They were probably speaking of the old king. Many among the Yllanfalen still consider the lyre’s last choice invalid, and fairly enough. I wasn’t really chosen.’

Jay said, ‘And they’re so happy with the idea of a human for a king, they’d rather have none at all.’

Father smiled faintly. ‘If you consider how superior they look to our eyes, only imagine how inferior we appear to theirs.’

Mother was silent among the wreckage of all her wild plans. When I saw the look of utter dismay in her eyes, I lost some of my desire to eviscerate her. Six years’ work crushed inside of three minutes.

Father wasn’t so kind. ‘So you see, Delia, your daughter—’

‘Our daughter,’ she interrupted, almost snarling the words.

‘—has no right to the monarchy at all, and they would never accept her even if she did. Such dreams ought to be put away.’

Mother shrugged, and offered me the lyre. ‘She can still have the lyre to go with those pipes. The Yllanfalen don’t seem to want it anyway.’

I put my hands behind my back. ‘No thanks. That thing scares the living daylights out of me.’

Jay, though, interceded — and not quite on my behalf. ‘Ves, the fact that you’re the only one who seems so drawn to it… that might be significant.’

‘What.’

‘The way your eyes reflect its light. Why? There’s some kind of connection between you and it that neither your mother nor I are subject to.’

‘Neither is your father,’ Mother put in.

‘Doesn’t mean it’s a good connection,’ I argued. ‘And it’s probably just responding to the palpable greed in my little heart whenever anything shiny is put before me.’

‘That could be it,’ Jay allowed, with a faint smile.

‘How did you get those pipes?’ said my father, with a sudden, sharp look.

‘Your unicorn,’ said Mother.

But he shook his head. ‘I wasn’t king long enough to form any bonds with the unicorns. If she’s got one of those trailing around after her, it’d be a former king in question. If any.’

‘Maybe Addie just likes me,’ I said. All in all, I much preferred that idea.

Mother held out the lyre to me, and said, with a deep weariness, ‘Please. Just take it. Apart from anything, I promised Milady.’

‘You promised Milady what?’

‘I promised the Society the use of the lyre, if we got hold of it. Why not? If you claimed it, you’d surely share.’

The possibility that Milady and my mother had conspired together to shove me onto a faerie throne did not much improve my mood. I opened my mouth to express some of this.

My expression of simmering rage apparently tipped my mother off, for she held up her stump. ‘No, I didn’t let her in on the queen-of-all-faeries plan.’

Queen of All Faeries. I distantly remembered awarding myself that title, around about age five, during many of my solitary games. I was hardly the only child to do so, surely. What was wrong with my reprehensible mother?

‘I’m sorry, Delia,’ said Jay firmly, ‘but I think we’ll have to disappoint Milady. That lyre has to go back to the Yllanfalen.’

She blinked up at him in shock. ‘But they don’t want it. You heard the man.’

‘It’s Thomas,’ said my father. ‘In case anyone was interested.’

‘I am,’ I said. ‘Thomas what?’

‘Thomas Goldwell.’

I offered my hand, which he took, and we shook hands with exquisite politeness. ‘How nice to meet you, Mr. Goldwell.’

‘And you, Miss… Goldwell.’

Was that my name, then? Cordelia Goldwell?

Nah. I’d been Vesper all my life.

But hey, a proposed name-change was a vast improvement over the horror with which he’d earlier looked upon me.

‘Call me Ves,’ I said.

‘Tom, then.’

That settled, I was at leisure to attend to the argument unfolding between Jay and my mother. He was in favour of the lyre’s return, she staunchly against. The battle looked set to rage on for some time, and the combatants were evenly matched: my mother’s gritty, rock-solid stubbornness against Jay’s calm logic and inflexible morality.

I’d privately put my money on Jay.

‘But they don’t want it,’ shouted Mother, like it was at least the sixth time she’d said it.

‘That is beside the point,’ said Jay, raising his own voice more than is usual for him. ‘It is rightfully theirs. And if they don’t want it, it’s only because it’s been broken. They do want what it was before.’

‘We can’t just unbreak it,’ said Mother scornfully. ‘It’s broken for good. So if they don’t want the broken one, why can’t we have it?’

‘It needs to be mended!’

‘Do you have any idea how to do that? Because if the Yllanfalen did, don’t you think they’d have done it by now?’

I had to admit, that point of my mother’s was a hard one to answer.

But Jay had it all under control. ‘I’d say there’s one person who could mend it, perhaps with a little help. The problem is, the Yllanfalen didn’t want to have anything to do with him. We have no such feelings.’

Everyone looked at Tom, who held up his hands. ‘I will have nothing to do with this.’

‘Why not?’ I said.

Silence fell, and my father looked consternated. ‘Well — you heard. They threw me out. I’m forbidden from ever setting foot in Yllanfalen again.’

‘Why? For being human?’ I said.

‘That, and I think they believe I was the one who corrupted the lyre.’

‘You weren’t, were you?’ said Jay, with a narrow look.

‘No. I swear it. Only a madman could imagine the Yllanfalen would accept a human for a ruler.’

‘And only a madwoman would want to be queen of a faerie kingdom, for real,’ I snapped.

‘You’re serious,’ said Mother.

‘Utterly.’

She grumbled something inaudible. ‘Then you can explain to Milady about the lyre.’

‘Gladly.’

One parent down, one to go. ‘Dad?’ I said.

He visibly flinched.

‘We are going to need you.’

‘You cannot make this into my problem if I do not choose to permit it,’ he said, snapping straight back into his icy-cold routine.

‘It is already your problem,’ I said. ‘It’s been your problem for thirty years.’

‘Don’t you want to be able to forget about the lyre?’ said Jay. ‘Forever? Help us, and it won’t be your problem ever again.’

Father tossed aside his book. ‘There are days when I wish I just hadn’t woken up at all.’

‘Could turn out to be the best day ever,’ I said with a bright smile. ‘You’ve already found a daughter.’

Father did not look as though this had been as transformative an experience for him as I might like. He stood up, and did a spectacular double-take in my mother’s general direction. ‘What,’ he said in a terrible voice, ‘happened to your hand?’

Mother gave her wolf-grin. ‘Why don’t I tell you about it on the way.’

So, back we went. To Cumbria; to Sheep Island; to the extinct gnome village, and to the caverns beneath (now with fewer lindworms!).

Mum made Dad carry the lyre.

He wasn’t happy about it.

The lyre, though, clearly was. It sang all by itself, without cease, adjusting its airy melodies to the circumstances as it saw fit.

And so it was, that our reluctantly heroic quartet set off in search of adventure with our own theme music to accompany us.

I keep thinking there’ll come a day when life will get a little simpler — or at least less absurd? Dream on.

‘What happened with you and your mother?’ said Jay at one point, somewhere en route.

‘Nothing?’ I said. ‘Which is sort of the problem.’

‘But she talks as though you two were close, when you were a child.’

‘If we were, I don’t remember anything about it. She sent me to boarding school at the age of six.’

‘That’s… young.’

‘Rather.’

‘Why would she do that?’

I could only shrug. ‘Jay, you’re the product of a solid marriage where both parties wanted to become parents. Or so I assume. I’m the product of a drunken one-night stand between two deeply irresponsible people. Why my mother didn’t just abort me I will never understand.’

‘Maybe she decided she liked the idea of parenthood after all.’

‘Then changed her mind after a few years? All too possible.’

‘Aren’t you glad she went through with it, even so? I know I am.’

He’d earned a smile with that one, so I bestowed my best one. ‘Thanks. Yes, I suppose I am.’

‘Though I wish you’d had a better childhood.’

‘Apparently it’s not entirely vital after all. I turned out fine.’

Jay was silent after that. Whether that was because he’d said everything he wanted to say on the subject, or whether he privately disagreed with my assessment of my character in adulthood, I decided not to ask.

I did turn out fine… right?

These were the thoughts that occupied my mind as we wandered back into the King’s Halls, our party augmented by one king. I should’ve been paying more attention, though, for we were little more than halfway across the cellars when mother abruptly stopped and said: ‘Lindworm.’

‘What?’ I gulped. ‘I can’t—’

‘It’s fine.’ My father took up the moonsilver lyre, played exactly three perfect notes, and while the crashing sounds of a lindworm on the approach rent the air, he stood with perfect composure and waited.

It came on in a rush, jaws agape, and looked ready to devour my father in one gulp.

Dad played those three notes again, and said in a ringing voice: ‘No.’

The lindworm stopped dead, closed its jaws with a snap, and then — I kid you not — it put its great head in the dirt and literally grovelled before my irascible parent.

‘Go,’ said Father. ‘Leave these halls to me.’

And the lindworm went.

‘Was there something?’ said Father, in response to our three-way stare.

‘Nothing,’ I squeaked.

‘It’s good to be the king,’ said Mother, with a sideways glance at me.

And damn her, she wasn’t wrong.

Turn page ->

I might be becoming an old hand at travelling by the Ways, but this was something else.

We were whirled up, up and away into the aether; so far, so ordinary. After that, we were leaves on the wind, and not in a cute way. Ever watched a coppery autumn leaf tossing and turning in the currents, sailing with airy serenity from gust to gust? It looks like the epitome of freedom.

It feels like crap.

As if the Winds themselves weren’t “playful” enough (as Jay had euphemistically put it), invisible hands snatched at my clothes, my limbs, my hair, and sent me tumbling in dizzying spirals. After half a miserable minute of this, I was longing for solid ground beneath my feet and praying, otherwise, to die.

When at last the whirl of winds ceased, and I felt approximately stationary again, the first words to pass my lips were: ‘A pox on all sprites. One of the really bad ones, too.’

‘Smallpox,’ said my mother.

‘Too… small.’

‘The Black Death,’ said Jay.

‘Might do.’

‘Actually,’ came a new and unfamiliar voice, ‘they’re sylphs.’

I opened my eyes.

Considering the starting point and our mode of transport, I’d expected to end up somewhere else improbably beautiful, even if it ended up being another clone of Hansel and Gretel’s forest.

Instead, we’d landed in somebody’s living room. I felt carpet under my hands — reasonably plush, not cheap — and the ceiling I was staring at was white plaster, with fussy ornaments in the corners. A huge bookcase monopolised the far wall, and tucked into the corner was a standard lamp with a kingfisher-blue shade, and a deep, luxurious armchair.

In the armchair sat a man of, maybe, sixty. His hair was grey, his face rather tanned, his eyes extraordinary: a kind of silvery-blue colour. He looked unassuming, in his wine-coloured jumper and dark trousers, with a large book open on his lap. His stare, though, was penetrating.

‘I appear to be horizontal,’ I said.

‘It’s rare to encounter the sylphs and come out standing,’ said the man.

I looked around, wincing around a pain in my neck. Jay had already made it to his feet, and stood with his back to the window, looking rather… trapped.

Mother had dragged herself into a corner, like a wounded animal, and sat scowling at the person we’d inadvertently gate-crashed upon.

‘Have I changed that much?’ she growled.

The man closed his book and turned a thoughtful stare upon Mother. ‘When a trio of hitch-hikers wash up without warning in my living room, it’s rather too much to expect to know them as well.’

‘Just one,’ said Mother. ‘Just me.’

I sat up, and peered at the man with unabashed scepticism. This was the gorgeous lyre-player? He looked ready to become somebody’s kindly grandfather about now, or he would if it wasn’t for that steely stare.

‘Mum,’ I said. ‘This can’t be him.’

‘It is,’ she said.

‘It can’t be.’

‘I know, but it is.’

‘Mother. He’s either under the best fae glamour I’ve ever heard of, or he’s human.’

‘You’ve come from the rath?’ said the man, ignoring this exchange.

‘The what?’ said Mother.

‘The fort. Is my effigy still there?’

I stared. ‘Your effigy?’ I blurted.

‘I’ll take that as a yes.’ He smiled, faint and wintry.

I clutched, involuntarily, at my pipes, which proved to be a poor move. His eyes zoned in on them immediately, and if I thought he’d looked intimidating before… ‘You took my pipes?’ he said.

‘These aren’t your pipes,’ I said hastily. ‘At least, they might be, but they’re not the ones from the rath. And anyway those aren’t your pipes either, they can’t be, because they’re the king’s pipes and you aren’t the king.’

He endured my babbling with enviable serenity and only said: ‘Am I not?’

‘You’re human.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

I blinked. ‘Who ever heard of a human faerie king?’

‘Every man, woman and child in Yllanfalen, more’s the pity.’ The man opened his book again, and went back to reading.

A glance at my mother’s face suggested she was as impressed with this conduct as I was.

So I threw my pipes at him.

Okay, not at him, quite. They landed harmlessly in his lap.

 ‘All right,’ said his rudeness, the purported faerie king. ‘Why are you here?’ He picked up the pipes and subjected them to close scrutiny. I saw his eyes widen a fraction, though he quickly hid his reaction.

‘We came looking for you,’ said Mother.

‘I gathered that. Why?’

‘I told you. I know you.’

He played a few notes on my pipes, just enough to instantly lay my pride in the dust. With ten years of practice, I thought I had got pretty good at the art.

If I was pretty good, he was a maestro. Under his hands, my little pipes produced a sound of such aching beauty, I felt tears spring to my eyes.

I hate emotionally manipulative music.

As he played, he stared unblinking at my mother’s face, and slowly shook his head.

‘Does this help?’ said my mother. She withdrew the lyre from under her arm, held it up, and let its full radiance shine.

And, oh, shine it did. It shone like the moon.

The king-who-might-not-be dropped the pipes, and silence reigned.

Then, he put his face in his hands. The muffled words, ‘Oh gods, no,’ emerged.

‘Not the response I was hoping for,’ muttered Mother.

‘Thirty years,’ said he, without removing his hands. ‘Thirty years, and no one’s been foolish enough to remove that thing.’

The thing in question was busy being so indescribably beautiful, I was wounded on its behalf at so unflattering an epithet. I sat and watched it shine, entranced. The strings really were water. They rippled, and they were faintly pearly, like moonlight on the river…

‘Ves,’ snapped Jay, and interposed himself between me and the lyre. He snapped his fingers in front of my face. ‘Your eyes are changing again. Focus.’

‘Fine, I’ll put it away,’ said Mother.

‘Best do, or I’ll feed it to the nearest sewer-grate.’

‘At last, someone with sense,’ said the maybe-king. He narrowed his eyes at Mother. ‘You were there, weren’t you. That night at the halls.’

Mother rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, I was present.’

‘Delia.’

She went quiet, and finally said, ‘You do remember.’

‘Yes.’ He didn’t entirely look pleased about it.

‘But you weren’t human, that night,’ said Mother.

‘Glamoured. My own face, only better. More beautiful… you know how it works,’ he finished with a scowl.

‘Mhm.’ Mother apparently went into an appreciative reverie.

‘Are you the king of the Yllanfalen or are you not?’ said Jay, in tones of exasperation.

‘No,’ said the man.

‘Then what have you been talking about?’

He threw aside his book. ‘I was, until I managed to get rid of that damned lyre.’

‘What’s the lyre got to do with it?’ I said.

‘Everything.’

I looked from him to Mother, deeply confused. Nobody had even touched on the topic of his possible fatherhood, yet, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I saw nothing in his face that reminded me of my own, but what did that signify?

I detected a shade of uncertainty in my mother’s eyes.

‘Perhaps you’d be good enough to explain,’ said Jay, with a politeness that seemed a trifle forced.

‘I will do that,’ said the erstwhile faerie king, ‘once I understand what you are doing in my living room.’

No one spoke. Jay and I were waiting for Mother to explain, but she sat cradling that mischievous lyre in silence, her face impassive.

I sighed. ‘We came looking for… the lyre. Or you. Or both.’ I waved a hand at my silent parent. ‘All her idea. Jay and I are still catching up.’

‘Great girl, my daughter,’ said Mother, placing a slight emphasis on the last word.

‘I’m not a girl, mother. Hit womanhood quite a while ago.’

‘This is your girl, hm?’ said the not-king.

I gave up the point. ‘Mum, if you’re waiting for him to figure it out on his own, we could be here a while. Could we maybe save some time?’

Mother rolled her eyes, and strummed her fingers lightly over the lyre’s watery strings. ‘Cordelia was born about eight and a half months after that night,’ she said.

Well, that got Dad’s attention. He reeled back as though she’d thrown something at him, and stared at me in dawning horror.

‘Hallo, Father,’ I said, casually tossing back my hair.

My show of nonchalance did not fool Jay, at least. He drew nearer to me, as though closing ranks against the parental complications. I appreciated that.

‘That’s impossible,’ my maybe-father gasped.

‘Biologically speaking, it’s highly probable,’ said Mother.

‘But not definite?’ I disliked how quick the wretched man was to leap on that point.

Mother studiously avoided my eye. ‘The other alternative is rather less likely.’

So much for Richard Rosser. No wonder he’d never contacted me.

‘So you brought her here to meet me.’ There still wasn’t a trace of welcome or joy discernible in his face, and I developed a sudden, fervent desire to tear my mother’s other hand off with my teeth.

One’s ego can only take so much in the way of a beating.

‘Yes…’ said Mother, and you can bet all three of us caught the hesitation in the word.

Finding three pairs of eyes fixed upon her, Mother gave up all in a rush. She lifted the lyre, waved it at me — at me — and said: ‘It’s about Cordelia meeting her father, but it’s also  about this. If she is your daughter, then… then this, and everything it signifies, is her birth right.’

I gritted my teeth. ‘And what does the lyre signify, Mother?’

‘Ohgod.’ That was Jay. He looked like he wanted to copy my father’s fine example, and put his face in his hands. ‘You said the lyre had everything to do with the monarchy. It’s not that the king gets the instruments as some kind of perk, is it? Whoever owns the instruments is the king.’

‘Or the queen, in this case,’ said Mother, with a smug quirk of her lips.

I backed up so fast, and so far, that my back hit the wall with a thud. ‘Oh, no. No way, absolutely definitely not, you have got to be joking…’ I shook my head vigorously. ‘No. You said anyone can play the lyre on festival days! Anybody!’

‘Anyone can play it,’ said Mother inflexibly. ‘I also said, no one else could play it like that.’

I hadn’t heard my father play the lyre, but if he played it the way he’d played my pipes, then fair enough.

‘But I can’t play the pipes half so well,’ I objected. ‘If musical talent is an indicator of royalty then I’m out.’

‘Because they haven’t chosen yet,’ said Mother placidly. ‘It’s not about musical talent at all. It’s about— oh, you explain.’ She cast an irritable glance at my father.

He sat back, wide-eyed with amazement. Or amusement, damn him. ‘These instruments were made by King Evelaern himself, long ages ago,’ he said. ‘Your mother is right: it is an ancient ritual and an ancient spell. When one monarch is ready to pass on the crown, the instruments choose another. No one knows how.’ His lips twisted. ‘It hasn’t always been that simple.’

‘Why then didn’t you just let me pick up the lyre, if this has been the plan all along?’ I said to Mother.

‘I wanted to make sure your father was ready to hand on the crown, first.’

‘But— but—’ I was floundering. ‘But what do bloodlines have to do with any of this?’

‘Nothing,’ said Father flatly.

‘It’s passed down family lines before,’ said Mother stubbornly.

Father raised a brow at her. ‘Has it?’

‘I’ve researched the matter.’

He grimaced. ‘Done your homework. Very good.’

‘Why, Mother?’ I said. ‘Why by all the giddy gods would you want to install me as queen of some damned faerie kingdom?’

She looked at me like I was crazy. ‘Cordelia. You spent fully half your childhood playing at being the Faerie Queene.’

‘Just games! I was a child!’

‘But were they? Maybe it was your heritage speaking.’

‘Have you been planning this ever since?’

‘No. Only for the last half a dozen years.’

Having run out of words, I could only stare at her, flabbergasted.

Father held up a hand. ‘I feel I ought to enlighten you on one or two points.’

Jay said, ‘You mentioned it isn’t always simple.’

Father nodded. ‘Never less so than when I was chosen. I’d better tell you the story.’

Turn page ->

It wasn’t.

‘Addie?’ I called, playing snatches from her song from time to time in hopes that one or the other sound would penetrate the forest gloaming.

No answer came, and she did not appear. I trudged through tangled thickets of conifer trees, their trunks wound about with ivy so dark green in hue it was almost black. Pools of water hid beneath the carpeting brambles, the one wetting my feet and the other scratching my ankles and legs, and progress was slow. How had Addie managed to disappear so thoroughly with such terrain to hamper her?

Magickal faerie creature. Right.

At last I heard a faint whinny, and another, and I adjusted my steps accordingly.

But it was not Addie that had called. It was another unicorn.

Another two minutes’ trudging brought me to the edge of a shadowy glade. There the trees grew more sparsely, and grass rather than bramble and vine covered the ground. In the centre was a serene pool, its glassy surface darkened.

Around the edges of that pool stood a whole herd of unicorns. I counted at least twelve, including Adeline.

She was making enthusiastic friends with a great, golden-palomino stallion.

Very enthusiastic friends.

‘Oh,’ I said.

I turned away my eyes, and sidled up to the pool, for a glimmer of something had caught my eye.

There, submerged at the bottom of the clear waters, was the most exquisite lyre. Smaller than most, its arched, curving frame looked made from moonlight itself: the moonsilver was aptly named. It appeared unstrung, but what had Mother said about it? Strung with enchanted waters from the king’s own pools.

Was this one of those pools?

Either way, what was it doing here, instead of up on the hilltop with the rest of the lost king’s personal effects?

My feet being soaked anyway, I shrugged and began to wade into the water.

‘Stop.’ My mother’s voice split the clearing like a whiplash, and I stopped on reflex.

‘What—’

‘Remember what happened when you tried to take the pipes off the bier?’ Mother and Jay had made it as far as the glade, but they remained on the edge of it, well away from the unicorn herd and the pool. Both looked disquieted.

‘Yes, but this has nothing of the same appearance. Look at it. All lop-sided as though someone just chucked it in there.’

‘They probably did. And what would encourage a person to hurl a Great Treasure to the bottom of a pool, do you suppose?’

‘Nothing good. Even so—’

‘Never mind even so. Leave it alone.’

I felt a flash of irritation. ‘Mother. You’ve dragged us all the way out here in order to find this damned lyre and the man who once played it. No? Well, we’ve found one of them. There it is, right there! And now you want me to just walk away?’

‘Yes. We’ve found it; excellent. And that’s enough.’

‘We can’t just leave it here. The Yllanfalen will want it back.’

‘You think they don’t know exactly where it is?’

I frowned. ‘They said it was missing.’

‘Yep. All of them, over and over, using almost the same words. We suspected there was something shady about it, no? Come on, Ves. Fight it off.’

‘Fight what off?’

‘The lyre,’ said Jay. ‘Has a hold of you somehow. If you could see your own face—’

‘What’s wrong with my face?’

‘Nothing,’ said Jay peaceably. ‘But there’s something a little bit wrong with your eyes.’

‘Namely?’

‘They’re the wrong colour.’

‘And they’re what colour now?’

Jay pointed towards the moon-pale lyre glimmering with its silvery glow. ‘That colour.’

So I had moonsilver eyes.

Right.

Only then did I realise that the pipes around my neck were glowing faintly with a similar light.

Mother pointed imperiously at Adeline. ‘Unicorn,’ she said sternly. ‘You’ve led your friend into danger. Now get her out of it.’

The unicorns, indeed, seemed untouched by whatever weird fae magick was going on in that glade. Possibly they were a part of it; certainly they were attracted to it.

Adeline stamped one hoof, and snorted.

‘If my daughter comes a-cropper in this glade,’ said Mother darkly, ‘I shall cut off your tail.’

Adeline’s ears twitched.

‘And you’d deserve it.’

Slowly, with the demeanour of a scolded child, Adeline wended her way around the pool’s edge until she reached me.

Then, with deliberate and tender care, she bit my ear.

‘Ouch,’ I shrieked, as much with surprise as with pain.

But something shattered, and unwound. I felt as though I’d been doused in ice-cold water, suddenly alert. I became abruptly aware of the frigid temperature of the pool I was standing in up to my calves, and backed out of the water so fast I almost fell over.

Hands grabbed me and pulled me farther free: Jay had hold of me.

‘All right,’ he said calmly, once he had pulled me all the way back to the glade’s edge. He gave me a considering once-over. ‘You look nearly normal again.’

‘Nearly?’

He indicated the pipes in my left hand, which were still softly aglow.

‘I’m getting confused,’ I said. ‘Are these the king’s pipes, or was that the set up on the hill?’

‘This isn’t a story,’ said Jay, lips curving with faint amusement. ‘Why can’t the king have more than one set of special magick pipes? Maybe he made them both.’

‘Quite likely,’ said Mother. ‘Cordelia. What I was going to tell you before your mad dash to inevitable doom: those winds that blew up, those were Winds of the Ways. There are strong traces of Waymagick all over the hill and the forest both. Faded, to be sure — at least decades old. But there’s no mistaking it.’

‘So there must be a henge somewhere here?’ I said.

She nodded. ‘It’s my guess that whoever threw the lyre into the pool left by the Winds. But,’ she added, holding up a hand to forestall my response, ‘I don’t think that person was a Waymaster.’

‘What? How can you tell?’

‘Because the place is crawling with faerie magick, too.’

‘Hardly surprising. It’s a faerie glade, Mother.’

‘Yes, but even the fae don’t throw magick around willy-nilly without a purpose.’

‘The Winds aren’t what I’m used to,’ said Jay. ‘They’re more… playful, unstable, erratic. Like they’ve been summoned by an unfocused mind, or—’

‘By lots of minds,’ I supplied.

He nodded. ‘And whoever it is has been mucking about with them, like they’re a toy.’

‘Sounds very fae.’

‘Specifically,’ said Mother, ‘sounds very sprite.’

Of course. The music-seller had said the sprites tend gardens; from Ayllin we knew that they kept the doors, among other things — and they did not often show themselves. Were the glade and the forest awash with them?

‘Did they throw the lyre in the water?’ I speculated.

‘Maybe,’ said Mother. ‘But maybe not. It’s hard to sense under all the fae magick, but someone human’s worked enchantments here in the past.’

‘Your lyre-player?’

She shrugged. ‘No way to know.’

‘Can you catch these Winds?’ I said to Jay.

‘Yes. If we find the henge.’

‘Will you?’

‘If someone gave me good reason to.’ He folded his arms and gave me his sceptical look.

‘I want to find out where they go.’

‘And then do what?’

I shrugged.

‘Don’t you ever get tired of playing Trial and Error?’

‘Nope.’ I smiled.

‘This is the henge,’ said Mother.

Jay looked sharply at her. ‘Are you sure? I don’t see it.’

I realised that when Jay said “see” he meant with his Waymaster senses. It wouldn’t be the first time we had used a buried henge with no visible stones or earthworks.

‘Might be fairer to say it used to be a henge,’ said Mother. ‘But the residue’s still here.’

Jay nodded. ‘We can try it.’ He took a hold of me, and beckoned to Mother.

‘Just a second,’ said she, and stepped into the glade.

The unicorns had drifted away, and stood in a cluster on the far side of the pool, idly munching grass. At first I thought Mother was heading for them, perhaps Adeline specifically.

But no. Her path led her unerringly to the pool of water I had so lately been hauled out of. And she didn’t hesitate. She waded right in, up to her ankles, her calves, her knees.

‘Mother!’ I called, and ran for her. ‘What are you doing?’

She made it to the centre before I could reach the edge of the water. Quick as a flash, she plunged her healthy hand into the pool and snatched up the lyre.

I was wading in after her by then. ‘Mum, you bloody madwoman, what did you just say to me?’ I grabbed her and began hauling her backwards, hoping she would drop the lyre.

She didn’t. ‘I told you to leave it alone,’ she said, in a voice of grim satisfaction. ‘Didn’t say anything about me.’

‘Isn’t that just the way with parents,’ I growled as we stumbled out of the water. ‘A thousand rules for me, none whatsoever for you. What have you done?’

I looked full into her face, expecting to see that moonsilver shine in her eyes that Jay had described in mine. But it was not there. Her own, hazel eyes stared back at me, just the same as they always were. Not a hint of faerie glamour could I detect.

As far as I could tell, my mother had acted voluntarily.

‘Tell you later.’ She stuffed the lyre under one arm, where its strings of rippling water promptly soaked through her sleeve.

Oh well. She and I both were thoroughly drenched by then anyway.

‘Shall we go?’ She was looking at Jay, who had adopted his Bleak Stare.

‘Why did you do that?’ he said.

‘My daughter is right, we cannot just leave the lyre there.’

‘So why did you stop her from taking it?’

‘Because when it comes to faerie treasures, there’s always a consequence. A woman may weather the effects of one faerie instrument well enough. Not two.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘So you were protecting me. How nice.’

‘Is it so hard to believe?’

‘Yes.’

She scowled. ‘So, are we going?’

Jay’s eyes narrowed, but what more could he say? The damage, whatever it might prove to be, had been done.

‘Just keep the thing away from Ves,’ he said. ‘The second I see her eyes turn all moonish again, we’re throwing it away.’

Mum clutched at it like he’d have to remove her other hand first.

Jay returned her a stare that said, try me.

Turn page ->

Mum was looking at Jay. ‘That trick with the nothingness. You said you’d open a door through the lindworm.’

‘Not the same kind of door. I was just trying to express the general concept in comprehensible language.’

‘All right. But could it be adapted for this gate?’

Jay took a moment to consider. ‘No,’ he finally said. ‘A gate — the kind you mean — is an insubstantial thing, it has no tangible presence. In a sense it’s already nothing, and I can’t open a nothing in nothing.’

Mother took this philosophically, and lapsed into thought.

I wracked my brains, too. What was known about these intra-realm gates? It was the province of the various magickal authorities to maintain existing gate networks; The Hidden Ministry poured a lot of resources into it. And, naturally, they had all kinds of rules about how many gates should remain open, and which should be barred. The Society had no one with those skills, because it wasn’t part of our mandate.

That meant I, too, was rather more ignorant about the process than I liked. Opening a new gate is the kind of impossible even I won’t venture upon, so I’ve never considered the matter before.

Course, I told myself, we weren’t opening a new gate here. Just freshening up an old one, and purely for the purposes of detective work.

‘Ves,’ said Mother tightly. She was making strange gestures with her surviving hand, as though she was pulling on an invisible thread. ‘Help me here.’

‘How?’

‘Remember when I taught you to knit?’

‘You never taught me to knit.’

‘I did, when you were six. You were almost as bad at it as I was.’

‘How is this relevant?’

‘Well.’ She was sweating now, her face glistening in the moonlight. ‘If you think of the magickal world as a thing knitted up out of — of — well, magick, then it can also be unknitted. Someone’s gone through a door here, and they may have firmly closed it behind themselves, but the door’s still here.’

‘You’re unravelling it?’

‘So to speak. Here.’ She grabbed my hand and thrust it out before herself. And I felt something. Nothing tangible; more like a sensation that shivered through my skin, neither heat nor cold but something beyond those two things. Whatever it was wound around my hand like — ugh, like I’d thrust my arm into a knot of spider’s webs. ‘You feel that?’

‘I wish a bit that I didn’t, but yes.’

‘Great. Grab a handful and pull.’

I obeyed — but the moment Mum let go of my hand, the sensations vanished and I was groping at empty air. ‘You’ve a sensitivity I lack, Mum. You’ll need to guide me.’

‘Fine. I’ll do this, you do that.’

We did all that, Mum keeping a firm grip on my wrist with her healthy hand and me using both of mine to tear holes in the magickal fabric of the Halls of Yllanfalen. As mother/daughter bonding events go, it was a weird one, but I’d take it over nothing at all, any day.

After twenty minutes or so, Mum — who’d been periodically waving her stump of an arm about, apparently testing the tear we were making — said, ‘Stop. I think we can go through.’

I was happy to obey, for I was trembling with weariness by then. You wouldn’t think unravelling the very fabric of magick would take so much out of a person.

‘Just need a second,’ I gasped.

Mum rolled her eyes and stood up, which was humbling. The woman had lost three friends, a hand and a lot of blood in recent days, and she was still unstoppable.

I hastily pulled myself together.

‘You okay?’ said Jay, looking at me with a concern I both welcomed and mildly resented.

‘Fine,’ I said crisply, only belatedly aware of how much I’d sounded like my mother.

The thought crossed Jay’s mind too, for his lips twitched.

Mother said, ‘We’re wasting time,’ and promptly hurled herself head-first into nothingness. I tensed, half expecting her to land painfully on the quartz-rock ground, but she disappeared.

I smiled at Jay. ‘After me,’ I said, and leapt after Mother.

I’d expected to end up on some distant street in Britain somewhere, or perhaps a forgotten heath or moor in the wilder parts of the country.

That’s not what happened.

‘This,’ I said, picking myself up off the floor, ‘is not Britain.’

‘You don’t say,’ muttered mother.

We’d emerged at the top of a low, sloping hill ringed all around with pine and conifer trees. The surrounding forest had an air of utter impenetrability, and was shrouded in gloom.

How did I know it was not Britain? Because the same silvery mist that cloaked Lyllora Var poured out of those trees, and clung to the base of the hill. Said hill was grown all over with a grasses and moss of a tawny gold colour, and scattered with jewel-like flowers.

At the summit, about three feet away from where we were standing, was a low stone bier upon which lay a corpse.

It was, as one would expect from the Yllanfalen, a most attractive corpse. The man was clearly fae, as improbably beautiful as the rest of his kind, with pale golden hair and a face that looked sculpted from marble. He wore a long robe of the finest silk I’ve ever seen, richly embroidered, and a delicate golden crown encircled his brow.

Around his neck hung a set of syrinx pipes that looked exactly like mine.

‘Found us a king,’ I observed.

Jay stood frowning down at the exquisite corpse. ‘I don’t understand. Why would anyone rip open a gate between the lyre-vault and the king’s tomb?’

‘I think this is the vault,’ said Mother. ‘That bubble back there was the gate.’

‘But there’s nothing here of value, except those pipes.’

‘Thief on the loose, remember?’

‘Then why not take the pipes, too? If they’re as similar to Ves’s as they look, that’s a Great Treasure just lying there unclaimed.’

‘Okay. Let’s try it.’ I reached for the pipes, and instantly a great bell tolled somewhere, at a volume that left my ears ringing. The ground shook beneath our feet, and thunder cracked the sky.

‘Ow,’ I said, and speedily withdrew my hand.

‘All right, that answers that,’ said Jay. ‘But then, how was the lyre taken? Was it here at all?’

‘I’d say yes,’ Mother replied after a moment. ‘There are traces of something that seems consistent with a musical Great Treasure. But, I thought that about Lyllora Var, too.’

‘Who could take it?’ I said.

They both looked at me with identical puzzled frowns. ‘What?’ said Mother.

‘Who could physically reach in and take the lyre, if it was once here? Who is that scary thief-repelling enchantment not protecting the lyre against?’

‘If you’ve got some idea, Cordelia, please just share it.’

‘The lyre belongs to the king, doesn’t it?’

‘Are we back with the idea that the king isn’t dead, because—’ Mother stopped, and abruptly bent over the king’s gorgeous corpse, her nose inches from his chin. Silence stretched. Then she said: ‘I was about to say you were crazy, but maybe not. There are about eighty layers of magick shrouding His Majesty here, and since he’s demonstrably not skeletal I might reasonably take them for enchantments of preservation, reverence and so on. But they don’t feel quite right. It’s something else.’

‘Like what?’ said I.

She grinned suddenly. ‘Ever heard of a faerie stock?’

‘You mean the doll type things some of the fae used to leave in the place of stolen human children?’

‘That’s it, though they’re a lot more realistic than a typical doll. Significantly, they do a terrific job of looking like a recently expired person.’

‘So,’ said Jay. ‘These aren’t preservation spells, because this man was never alive?’

‘I’m thinking so. Which doesn’t mean the real king is still alive; he’s just as likely to be taking up ground-space as a skeleton somewhere. This is some kind of… shrine to his memory.’

‘So it probably included the lyre,’ said Jay.

‘If the King’s pipes are here, it would’ve made sense to put the lyre here too,’ Mother allowed.

‘Did the king have any children?’ said I. ‘Surely the role of monarch would go to one of them when he died. They could’ve taken the lyre.’

‘But not the pipes,’ said Jay.

‘You’re really harping on that point.’

‘Because it’s a detail that makes no sense. I don’t think the thief hypothesis is working too well.’

My dreams of being involved in a daring heist story evaporated. Jay was right.

‘Unless,’ said Mother, ‘whoever took the lyre had a specific use for that one instrument only.’

‘Such as?’ Jay said. ‘I can’t recall that anyone’s ever said what the thing does, except get passed around at parties.’

‘That may prove a crucial question,’ said Mother.

‘Mum, how about you do your magick-tracing trick so we can get out of here,’ I said. ‘His Majesty here is giving me the creeps.’ Perhaps because (real corpse or not) he looked like he’d died about twelve seconds ago. Just lain down on his personal bier and… died.

‘Right.’ Mother wandered off, her steps describing a wide circle around his dead-but-not-decaying majesty’s bier.

On a whim, I picked up my pipes and played Addie’s song.

She appeared so promptly, she cannot have been far away. Up she trotted, unusually lively, shaking her head and whinnying loudly.

‘Ves,’ said Jay. ‘Look. That song’s—’

‘Done something? I see it.’ A pearly light shimmered around the dead king, or his effigy, and I half expected him to wake up.

He did not. Addie, though, went wild. She trotted around the bier, stamping her hooves, and nudging the body with her nose so hard she almost threw the king onto the floor.

Then she picked up her silvery feet and charged away down the hill, mane and tail flying in the winds that blew up out of nowhere.

Jay and I watched this display in wide-eyed silence.

‘Follow that unicorn,’ said I, and began to run.

‘Follow—?’ said Jay. ‘Can you keep up with a unicorn at full gallop, because I—’

The rest of his sentence was lost to the winds, as I ran full tilt away from him in the direction Adeline had gone. Down and down the hill we went, my feet thudding in the grass, fey winds tossing my hair. There was music in that wind, faint strains but half-heard, but they lent me speed and energy and I could almost have danced my way down the hill.

Adeline still left me far behind, but I ran on, breath turning short as I neared the bottom of the hill and the edge of the dense, dark forest that surrounded it.

Ahead of me, Adeline plunged heedlessly into the trees, her bright, moon-pale coat swallowed up instantly in shadow.

I paused for a moment on the edge of that forest, attempting without success to peer into the gloom.

‘Seriously?’ panted Jay, drawing up beside me. ‘We’re going to follow a unicorn into the dark depths of a faerie forest? Did you learn nothing from your bedtime stories as a child?’

‘I learned that adventure lies beyond the borders of the familiar.’

‘We’re way beyond the borders of the familiar already. Does it have to be a dark forest, Ves?’

‘I’m trusting Addie.’

‘She’s literally a magickal faerie creature.’

‘Haven’t you heard?’ I grinned, with a shade of my mother’s wolfish smile about it. ‘So am I. Where’s Mum?’

‘Here,’ growled my mother. ‘Don’t be a fool, Cordelia.’

‘Whyever not? It’s been working well for me for the past thirty-one years.’

Mother was limping. The pelting run down the hill hadn’t been good for her. ‘Why don’t you stay here?’ I added. ‘I’ll be right back.’

Without waiting for further arguments, I plunged into the trees, conscious that Addie drew farther away with every minute’s delay.

I’ll never admit it to my  mother, or to Jay, but I instantly regretted it. Three steps was all it took; the trees closed in around me, cutting off most of the light, the temperature dropped by at least ten degrees, and even sounds faded to a muffled distance. I felt cut off from the world, and utterly alone.

‘Right,’ I said stoutly, and took another step. ‘This had better be worth it, Adeline.’

Turn page ->

What lay on the other side was not a room at all, but an expansive cave. Whether this, too, was some kind of magickal manifestation created by the Yllanfalen, or whether it had always been there, I had no way to determine. If the latter, it had been co-opted into service as some kind of sacred site, by the looks of it, for it had a hushed, hallowed air. Stone worn smooth by time stretched before us, the ground sloping gently into the centre. The walls of the cavern swooped up into a kind of natural vaulted ceiling, far over our heads. They were empty of things one might expect to see in a cave system, like stalagmites and stalactites. Instead, they bore extensive carvings depicting scenes of Yllanfalen life. Many featured an unusually tall fellow with a crown, a lyre in hand, and pipes hanging around his neck, so, no prizes for guessing who was revered here.

They liked their jewels, the Yllanfalen. Quartz and beryl and spinel and a hundred other gems adorned everything, and I could see that because they were all lit up with the same clear fire that had emblazoned the portal through which we’d entered (I’m giving up terming it merely a door. No word but portal could befit such absurd— I mean, such wondrous grandeur).

The fountain occupied the central position in the middle, where the ground arrived at its lowest point. It rose to the height of three Baron-Albans, composed of five tiers, and as far as I could tell from this distance it was made out of clear glass radiating moonlight. Lovely.

All the cavern around it would fill up with water, I supposed, to form that mythical lake we were looking for. Which presented one immediate problem: if we managed to switch on the Magick Fountain of Dreams, how were we to avoid promptly drowning in the Faerie Lake of Bespelled Waters?

One problem at a time, Ves, hm?

My wonderfully prosaic mother stood taking in all this magickal magnificence with an expression profoundly unimpressed. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘And how do we persuade that frippery thing to start spewing water?’

Ayllin looked pained at my mother’s soulless choice of words, as well she might. She made no answer, however. Instead she took up her own syrinx pipes and began to play a tune I can only term ethereal. The melody echoed around the cavern, swelling in volume and richness with every note. That softly-glimmering moonlight centred upon the fountain grew stronger, and clear water began to pour from its spout.

The melody was not a complicated one; I soon had its measure. I joined in, playing a low counterpart, and to my surprise the water flow promptly tripled. The skysilver really did give these things a bit more oomph, huh?

The fountain might be pumping away merrily, but it still seemed to me that the wide cavern would take weeks to fill. Soon, though, water was lapping at our toes, and then we were soaked to our ankles. ‘Er,’ said Jay. ‘Got a boat, or something?’

No sooner had he spoken than a boat appeared, drifting up to us with the serenity of a construct whose existence is in no way impossible. Never mind that it, too, appeared to be made of glass, and it shone with the same pale moonglow as the fountain. It had one of those fanciful swan’s head arrangements, too, and a slender set of oars. I eyed it with misgiving, but Jay got straight in and picked up the oars. Since he didn’t disappear through the bottom of the boat, I followed suit. As did Mother.

Ayllin, though, did not. She had levitated herself — standing, incomprehensibly, on some kind of a giant silvery leaf, and where had that come from, hm? Is the entirety of Yllanfalen made out of magick or something? She did not cease to play, even as her leaf rose smoothly to the ceiling, taking her with it.

My mother looked as though she’d like to take the boat’s pretty oars off Jay, but remembered her missing hand with chagrin. She sat scowling at him instead. ‘Don’t tickle the water. Row!’

‘To where?’ protested Jay, most reasonably.

But Mother lifted an arm — the one without the hand — and pointed her stump imperiously at the centre of the lake. The water had risen high enough now to engulf the fountain, as tall as it was, and a thick mist had collected where it once stood. Through the silvery-white fog I could just make out the outlines of a tiny spit of land.

The island-vault had checked in.

Jay rowed. The lake was not all that large, and there were no currents to fight with; we made rapid progress, and soon drew near to the island. I had time enough to note, with fascination, that the waters were full of lithe fish with twilight-blue scales, and that the bottom had developed a vibrant crop of pond weed, lake mosses and other vegetation — and then Jay had the boat up against the island and had jumped out. He stood holding a hand in my mother’s direction, but I could have told him that was a waste of time. She made a point of reaching the bank unaided, earning herself a sardonic flicker of Jay’s brow.

I accepted his help with gratitude, largely because it is quite tricky to navigate such a manoeuvre while also playing the syrinx pipes. Once my feet hit solid, quartzy ground, however, Ayllin ceased to play, so I let my song die away too. The sudden silence echoed.

‘Lyllora Var welcomes you,’ she said mysteriously, with a smile I did not much like. It had too much smug mischief in it.

‘How nice,’ said mother, folding her arms. She stared coolly at Ayllin. ‘You’re keeping a comfy distance, I note.’

Ayllin’s only response was a graceful wave, like a queen, and then she stepped off her leaf and — disappeared.

‘Do they have some kind of magick school here?’ I breathed. ‘I’d enrol like a shot.’

‘More importantly,’ said Jay. ‘We appear to be stranded.’

He was right. The boat had dematerialised as thoroughly as Ayllin, and the door through which we had entered must now lie several feet under water.

Mother snickered. ‘She got rid of us very neatly.’

She had, at that. If I had wondered at any point why she was so helpful, when the rest of Yllanfalen had been broadly evasive, here was my answer.

‘Well,’ I said, turning my back to the problem of the disappearing boat and the submerged door. ‘Let’s get what we came for. Then we can worry about how to get out.’

‘Right.’ Jay joined me. The swirling mists were so pervasive, they cloaked almost every inch of the island in an opaque shroud we could scarcely see through. It was pretty mist, I noted, like everything else in this absurd place: it shone as though under moonlight, and there were traces of something that glittered.

The ground was uneven and very hard. It, too, sparkled, so I observed that Ayllin had not exaggerated when she’d said the place was made out of quartz-rock. Nothing much seemed to be growing on it, save an occasional, blithely impossible patch of velvety moss. I linked arms with Jay on my left and Mother on my right, unwilling to lose either of them in the fog, and we walked slowly forward. The lights I’d sent up with a flick of my Wand did not help much, but at least they could prevent us from walking into anything.

Not that there proved to be anything to walk into. We walked from one side of the island to the other in the space of a few minutes, and encountered nothing at all.

‘There was something about a bubble of ligh—’ I began, and suddenly I saw it: a bubble indeed, pearly with moonglow, and floating about eight feet over our heads.

It was empty.

‘So the lyre’s really gone,’ Mother mused.

‘You thought they might be lying?’ I asked.

‘Yes. We got the same story from too many people, and promptly, too. Very consistent. Very like a collective lie.’

‘Why would they lie about its absence?’

‘To protect it from treasure-hunters like us,’ said Mother with her wolfish grin.

‘Fair,’ I said. ‘You might still be right. Ayllin’s cordially conducting us down here only to leave us stranded seems rather to support the idea.’

‘A decoy vault?’ said Jay. ‘A complicated solution, but I like it.’

‘It might explain why everything’s so sodding elaborate,’ I muttered.

‘Enough theorising,’ said Mother crisply. ‘Time for some facts.’ And, to my puzzlement, she sat cross-legged upon the ground where she stood and laid her hands — er, hand — against the rocky ground.

Nobody spoke for a bit.

‘Mum,’ I said after a while. ‘What are you doing?’

She’d shut her eyes, but now they snapped open again. ‘What do you think I’m doing?’

‘No idea.’

She blinked. ‘Really?’

‘Really.’

Her frown appeared. ‘I’m looking for traces of past magick performed here.’

‘You can do that?’ I was startled. It wasn’t so much that it was a rare ability, as that few people thought it worth the trouble of developing it. The Hidden Ministry had a team of magickal forensics experts, if you will, attached to their Forbidden Magicks department; other than that, it was mostly popular with archaeolo—

‘Why do you think I became an archaeologist?’ Mother said, forestalling my thought. ‘It’s my best talent.’

‘I hadn’t thought about it.’

‘We’ve discussed this before.’

‘No,’ I said steadily. ‘We haven’t.’

The frown deepened. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Mum. We pretty much haven’t discussed anything before.’

She had no response to make to that, apparently, for her eyes shut again and she fell silent.

Jay and I waited, he trying not to signal a thousand disapproving thoughts with his eyes, and largely failing. At least they were directed at Mother this time, rather than me.

‘Right,’ said Mother after a while. ‘It’s trickier than usual down here, because the whole damned place is soaked in magick. Everything we’re sitting on is the product of it. But there are traces of something that feels like music-magick still lingering here. Rather faded. Probably from at least a couple of decades ago. Might be the lyre? And there’s something else, too, something much bigger.’

‘Bigger?’ I prompted.

‘More powerful. And unusual. I’d say it’s a spell that was cast only the once, also some time ago, but it’s left a stronger residue for all that.’

‘And what was it?’

‘I think someone opened some kind of a gate.’ She stood up, dusting off her hand on her ragged trousers. ‘Much like the one we came through.’

‘You mean…’ I thought for a second. ‘You mean back into Britain proper?’

‘Most likely, yes.’

See, magickal gates aren’t exactly portals. They don’t transport you over large distances. They’re just doors that lead from regular Britain into the hidden magickal pockets like the Dells and Troll Enclaves — and, of course, the kingdoms of Yllanfalen.

However ordinary that makes them, however, it’s no easy matter to open one. No easy matter at all.

‘That sounds like the work of a thief, doesn’t it?’ said Jay. ‘Got down here somehow, snatched the lyre, and escaped into Britain with it.’

‘Could be,’ said Mother. ‘Though it isn’t so easy to open such a gate as all that.’

And that’s the truth. If it were easy, we’d spend a lot less time searching for existing gates when we wanted to cross realms. But this was an existing gate, near enough. ‘Next question,’ said I. ‘How far faded is it? Could it be revived?’

Mum looked at me. ‘You want to follow?’

‘Why not? We need a way out anyway.’

She nodded. ‘Let’s see what we can do.’

Turn page ->

‘Gods curse it,’ I swore, groping for my pipes and my wand. I should have been better prepared, but it had happened so damned fast — Ayllin hadn’t even reached the bottom of the staircase.

‘Pipes,’ barked my mother to me.

‘Ayllin—’

‘Pipes. Your job is to ruin that damned lindworm.’

I don’t know what Mother planned to do, but Jay had his rubescent Wand in hand and was running for the stairs. My mother was going to extract Ayllin with her bare hands, apparently — or hand, anyway.

Me, though. Ruin. Right.

This time when I played, I went for a different song. The last one was a lullaby; my only goal had been to keep the thing pacified long enough for us to escape. Lindworms aren’t up there on the same level of rarity as, say, griffins, but we don’t wreck them without good cause either.

Considering the state of my mother’s dead companions, her missing hand, and now the probable state of our guide, I figured Mum was right. This was good cause.

I blew a swift, sharp blast on my pretty pipes, and the sound split the air with the intensity of a thunderclap. I repeated the sound, twice — thrice. The lindworm was a mass of roiling, scaled flesh by that time, with poor Ayllin wound up somewhere within its muscular coils. The second wave of sound sent a tearing shudder through its miserable carcass. The third brought it to a temporary, shuddering halt.

At the fourth, there was blood.

I went after it, blazing fury, my song growing more intense and more discordant with each shrieking note I played. I forced the damned thing into submission, alternating blasts of my pipes with waves of layered curses shot from the tip of my lovely Sunstone Wand.

By the time I was finished, the lindworm lay insensate, its massive body filling the passage below from floor to ceiling. Blood had leaked from its eyes, its mouth, what passed for its ears, and run all over the stairs. Its jaws hung slack, revealing rows of shark-teeth that would never chew anybody to bits again.

‘That’s for my mother’s gods-damned hand!’ I shrieked at it, and kicked it.

Ayllin, mercifully, was alive, though bathed in such a quantity of blood that I feared it couldn’t be for long. Once again, I wished fervently for Rob, and cursed my mother’s secretiveness. I ran over to Jay and my mother, who were supporting Ayllin between them. I think I hadn’t imagined the moment, mid-battle, where Ayllin had popped free of the lindworm’s coils and gone sailing into the air, only to float down in a flurry of feathers.

‘Will she live?’ I gasped.

‘Most of the blood isn’t hers,’ said Mother tersely, checking Ayllin over with a remarkably professional air for someone with zero knowledge of medicine. ‘Lindworm’s,’ she added unnecessarily.

Ayllin groaned, and shook herself. She looked more dazed than destroyed, to my relief — but also to my surprise. The worm had hit her with the force of a train. ‘Borrow— your — pipes?’ she panted, looking at me.

This time, I handed them over promptly.

She began a lilting song much better suited to their airy, faerie delicacy than the Song of Ruin I’d been playing a moment before. I felt cocooned in sound, and, gradually, refreshed; it was like being wrapped in a warm blanket on a cold winter day, and pumped full of hot chocolate.

Ayllin began to look revived.

Immediate alarm over Ayllin passed, I was at leisure to notice Jay.

‘What?’ I said.

He blinked his wide, wide eyes, and went on staring at me in… horror? Awe? ‘What the bloody hell did you do to that worm?’

‘Ruined it.’

‘I see that.’

I shrugged. ‘Had to.’

‘Did I know you could do that?’

‘You know when Rob said I could handle myself in a fight?’

‘No, but okay.’

‘Well, he did, and that’s what he meant. I just don’t like to do it.’

‘It’s Rob’s job.’

‘That it is, and he’s better at it by an order of magnitude.’

‘That scares the living daylights out of me.’

‘It should. You never want to get on Rob’s bad side.’

Mother spoke up. ‘Rob Foster’s still with the Society, is he?’

That got my attention. ‘You know Milady and Rob?’

‘I’ve been alive for a while.’

‘So what? Rob’s the quiet type, and Milady never leaves Home.’

Mum raised a brow. ‘Doesn’t she?’

Jay and I maintained identically stunned silences for about four seconds.

‘Er,’ said Jay.

‘What?’ said I.

Mother gave her secretive smile, and I rolled my eyes.

‘She’s just messing with us,’ I told Jay. ‘She does that.’

Mum nodded and turned back to Ayllin. ‘That must be it.’

And, curse her, she left a note of doubt growing in my mind.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Anyway. On with the larceny show?’

Ayllin looked sharply at me, and I coughed.

‘On with the detecting show, I meant. It just feels like larceny, what with all the fighting-past-lindworm-guardians and breaking-into-ancient-vaults…’

‘It is starting to feel remarkably like a heist,’ Jay agreed.

I played a few notes from the theme to Ocean’s Eight.

‘Stop it,’ said Mother.

I sighed, and trailed up to the felled lindworm. Thankfully, it had stopped twitching. ‘Next problem,’ I said, trying futilely to see past the creature. Its enormous body blocked the entire passage, both ways. ‘How do we get past this thing?’

‘Can’t you, I don’t know, liquify it or something?’ Jay made hand-waving-magick-casting gestures, as though that might help.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Can you?’

 ‘I’m just the new guy.’

‘With Waymastery powers to die for, an odd talent for fae music he still thinks is a secret, and with gods-know-what other skills shoved up his black leather sleeves — but just the new guy.’

‘She’s too perceptive,’ said Jay to my mother.

‘Annoying, isn’t it?’ said she.

Jay grinned at me. ‘The thing about being a Waymaster is, nobody ever wants to talk about anything else.’

‘So are you hiding any talents that might vaporise a lindworm?’

‘Still nope.’

‘Damnit.’

‘I might be able to open a door in it, though.’

‘Open a— in it? What?’

‘It’s a kind of warped sidespell of Waymastery.’

‘No it isn’t,’ said Mother flatly. ‘If you mean what I think you mean, that’s advanced stuff. Do you think just anybody can open a damned void in a fresh corpse?’

‘True,’ said Jay. ‘But it occurs more commonly in Waymasters. Nobody knows why.’

‘Jay,’ I said. ‘Whatever Milady’s paying you, it’s nowhere near enough.’

Jay glanced meaningfully at the destroyed lindworm. ‘I’d say the same of you.’

‘And now you’re starting to scare me too.’

‘I can’t do it on anything that’s alive,’ Jay said quickly. But then, to my horror, he paused. ‘Well. I don’t know for certain that I can’t, as I’ve never tried. If I did, the Ministry would sign an immediate warrant for my capture and execution, and I’d turn myself in gladly.’

‘Let’s get on with it,’ Ayllin cut in.

She had a point. The day was wearing on. I stepped back out of Jay’s way — I didn’t want to be too near him while he was boring holes in organic matter.

He did some things. Don’t ask me what, I cannot even begin to comprehend what was going on with him.

But when he’d finished, a neat circular hole had appeared, running right through the centre of the lindworm’s body. It was just about tall enough for us to pass through, if we stooped.

Its edges were so perfect, it could’ve been bored by a machine.

‘Hang on,’ I said, as Mother made to stride straight on. I lit up a fireball and sent it through.

The plan was to light up the other side, so we could see if any other lindworms were lying in wait. But my fireball sputtered and died before it had passed more than halfway through the lindworm.

‘It’s a patch of nothing,’ Jay reminded me. ‘No air.’

‘Right. We do it the exciting way, then.’ I went in, trying not to think about why my feet squelched as I walked through Jay’s void-door. I lit up another fireball the moment I reached the cold corridor beyond, and let it shine brightly.

The corridor was reassuringly empty.

‘We’re good,’ I called. ‘Onward.’

Ayllin marched past me, swiftly followed by Mother. Jay and I brought up the rear. I felt a moment’s concern for Ayllin out there in front, again — what if there was more than one lindworm down here? But, the woman appeared to be indestructible. Whatever she was doing to protect herself was clearly effective. I was getting curious about Yllanfalen magick.

The King’s Halls were rather better supplied with cellars and under-passages than I’d imagined, for we went down and down into the bowels of the building, and it got steadily colder and darker. Not that this had much of an effect on the stunning beauty of the place. When it’s Yllanfalen, it’s not the frigid, miserable chill of early February, with not a scrap of warmth or joy looming on the horizon; it’s the glittering cold of snowflakes and clear ice, a darkness that’s velvet and enchanting rather than gloomy.

‘I’d really like to talk to your interior designers,’ I said to Ayllin, as we marched through some kind of subterranean ballroom draped in cobwebs — the attractive, misty kind, of course — and hung with exquisite silks.

‘Can’t,’ she said tersely.

‘Not all of them, certainly. All this must be the work of hundreds—’

‘Zero,’ said Ayllin.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘None of this,’ and she waved a hand, somewhat impatiently, at a rose-marble fountain in miniature singing airily to itself as it poured icy water into the air, ‘was built by either mortal hand or faerie.’

‘Then by whose?’

She shrugged. ‘By magick. The Halls develop as they will. Though, they have ceased to grow at the rate they once did. I believe only two new rooms have manifested in the past twenty years.’

Manifested? ‘Giddy gods, you mean to say all this just appears?’

‘It isn’t that simple. Though at the same time, it is.’

‘Could you maybe just explain?’

‘If I could, I… well, I might.’ I heard that mischievous flash of a smile again in her voice. ‘It is a process that is not fully understood. The prevailing theory is that it is the product of the dreams of the Yllanfalen, that the Halls respond to our collective ideas, needs and wishes.’

‘If this is what the inside of an Yllanfalen head looks like…’ I began to reconsider my ideas about my possible parentage, for who wouldn’t want to generate such ethereal beauty with a thought? Then again, this must be an argument for my being one hundred percent human. The inside of my head looked like… a cluttered yard, with books, teapots and pancakes piled willy-nilly about, too many colours crammed into a small space (some of them clashing), and a litter of half-finished notions and abandoned dreams coating everything like dust.

‘I don’t know how you find your way through it,’ growled Mother. ‘Last time I was here, I was lost within two minutes. But, that was part of the fun at the time.’

‘Most of it is ancient,’ said Ayllin. ‘Hush, now. We draw near the fountain.’

We’d drawn near to, and passed, about eight fountains already; I gathered that the fountain held some kind of special significance in the collective consciousness of the Yllanfalen, if this was indeed the manifestation of their dreams. Since every one of those fountains had been utterly exquisite, I had high hopes for the important one.

They were not disappointed.

We fetched up before an enormous stone door, its surface deeply etched with runic characters all filled in with quartz. I couldn’t read them; I didn’t even recognise the language. The door had an inflexible air I found most unpromising, for by the looks of it, we’d as easily persuade a mountain to step aside.

But Ayllin said something incomprehensible in a voice that rang with a faint melody, and the bejewelled runes lit up with white fire.

The door creaked ponderously open.

Turn page ->

Faerie being what it is, the Vault of Promise couldn’t be in some mere ordinary location. There’s no Central Bank of Goodies in the lands of the Yllanfalen, with lock boxes and safes; there isn’t even a secret room somewhere, complete with armed guards and unpronounceable passwords.

No, the Yllanfalen have an island in the middle of a lake. The island in question is called Lyllora Var, it’s literally about fifty feet across, and it’s made out of white rock laced with starry quartz. On this island is a bubble of light, and in that bubble of light is — or was — the moonsilver lyre.

So far, so lovely.

The catch with Lyllora Var? It isn’t there.

Neither is the lake.

Because this is Faerie, so there’s a magic fountain that usually isn’t there either. When it is, it’s under the old king’s palace. When it feels disposed, it is so obliging as to pour forth the waters of this wondrous lake, and when the lake’s restored then the island appears.

By the time we had got the entire story pieced together, I was no longer surprised that the Yllanfalen seemed so happy to share details of this super-secret vault. I mean, why not? It’s not like we were ever going to reach it.

‘Are we at all inclined to reconsider the idea that someone swiped the lyre from this vault?’ I said, as we turned away from our latest interrogee. The woman in question had outright sneered at us. Sneered! I judged we were not the only hopeful treasure-hunters to show up with searching questions about this lyre. She, too, had trotted out the same line about the lyre’s being missing.

‘No,’ said Jay. ‘They retrieve the thing every festival, remember? Or did, before it vanished. So it’s achievable.’

‘Wait,’ called the woman upon whom I had just resolutely turned my back.

I turned around.

Her gaze, though, was not fixed upon me. She was looking at Addie, who had wandered off for a large part of the afternoon, and had now wandered back. ‘That unicorn,’ she said. ‘Where did you…?’

Having grown tired of the sneering lady already, I merely waved my pipes by way of response.

‘Let me see those,’ she snapped.

‘No—’ I began.

‘Ves,’ Jay said, apparently having anticipated this response. ‘She may have something useful to tell us.’

I handed them over with great reluctance, and stood vigilant, in case she should make a break for the hills with my pipes in hand.

She did not, however. She inspected them most closely, her young face intent, and ran her fingers several times over the silver. Then she put them to her lips, and played a ditty of a tune I’d never heard before.

My lovely Adeline paused in the act of nibbling grass by the roadside, and lifted her head. She stared at the woman who’d moved in on my perfect pipes, and the woman, damn her, stared back.

If I was expecting some explanation as to what that was all about, I was out of luck. The woman merely handed my pipes back to me, her face unreadable, and said: ‘Why are you interested in the moonsilver lyre?’

‘We’re from the Society for the Preservation of Magickal Heritage,’ I rattled off, feeling obscurely annoyed. ‘It’s our job to research ancient artefacts.’

‘Research?’ she said. ‘Why this one?’

‘It’s also our job to rescue ancient artefacts,’ said Jay.

‘So you came to “rescue” the lyre,’ she said, her mouth curving satirically. ‘Did you know it was missing before you arrived?’

‘It’s my fault,’ said Mother. ‘I brought them here. I’ve seen the lyre before, you see, and I wanted to see it again.’

‘Why?’

‘Research.’

The woman looked from me to Jay to Mother, exasperated. ‘Do you even have any idea what you are trying to accomplish?’

‘Nope,’ I muttered.

Jay elbowed me. ‘Look, we’d like to get the lyre back for you,’ he said. ‘It’s our job. We’re hoping to begin at the vault, find out what happened there.’

He received a strange look in response. ‘What if it does not wish to return?’

‘Wish?’ faltered Jay. ‘It has wishes?’

‘It has… a destiny,’ she said, spectacularly unhelpful. ‘The same as you or I.’

‘Was its destiny to be purloined by a thief?’

‘Is that what happened?’ Her head tilted.

‘I don’t know,’ said Jay flatly. ‘Is it?’

The woman looked dreamily up at the sky, probably preparing another fatuously mystical statement for our benefit.

‘For goodness’ sake,’ I said. ‘By my unicorn’s silky nose hairs, will you help us or not?’

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘For the sake of Ylariane, and those pipes.’

‘Who or what is Ylariane?’

Adeline whickered, and bumped my elbow with her nose.

‘…Oh.’

The woman’s sardonic smile was back. ‘I will need your sworn word,’ she said, gravely. ‘If you find the lyre, you will return it to the Yllanfalen.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘The Society always repatriates artefacts, wherever possible.’

‘Very good. You will be held to that.’ There was a shiver of something in her voice as she spoke, something rather dark. It occurred to me that, however obliging the Yllanfalen appeared to be about answering our questions (for the most part), they would not be easy to fool, or to betray.

Fortunately, we had no plans to do either. Did we? I eyed my mother with momentary misgivings, for she was wearing an expression of mild congeniality which seemed at odds with her character.

I’d have to keep a close eye on her.

We had interrupted the Yllanfalen woman in the middle of shopping, I’d judged from the quantity of small parcels tucked into a willow basket she carried. She now lifted the basket as though placing it onto a shelf — whereupon it disappeared. Then she turned to us with a nod, dusted off her hands, and said: ‘We’ll be needing a few of Ylariane’s friends, I imagine?’

‘You are going with us?’ said Mother.

‘Did you want a guide to the lake, or not?’ answered the woman with faint irritation.

Mother held up her hands. ‘Actually, we do.’

‘Then first we must return to the palace. The unicorns?’

I hurried to obey, whistling Addie’s bouquet of tunes upon my pipes. She stamped one silvery hoof, and spat out grass. ‘How did you do that?’ I blurted, when I’d finished.

Our guide’s head tilted again. ‘What?’

‘The way you stored your basket! I’ve never seen it done.’

‘It is an old trick, among the Yllanfalen.’

‘So how do you do it?’

She gave another of her faint smiles. ‘If you find and return the lyre, I will give you the spell. Is that fair?’

Privately, I wasn’t sure such a spell (however handy) was quite a fair trade for an ancient lyre of unimaginable power and priceless value, but since we weren’t here to steal the thing anyway, it seemed a solid prize. I agreed.

‘What’s your name?’ I said after, with a smile. I might have been regretting my earlier irritation with her. After all, she was Faerie. A certain ethereal mysticism was natural to her, in the same way that drinking, vulgarity and a love of sports are natural to humankind. I shouldn’t really hold her fey qualities against her.

‘I am called Ayllindariorana,’ she said.

‘That’s… not going to happen.’

She glanced at me, and as the friends of Adeline/Ylariane came galloping up the street to aid us, I detected a gleam of mischief in her sea-blue eyes. ‘You can call me Ayllin.’

‘Better.’

And so, back to King Evelaern’s Halls. We galloped through a shroud of hazy, ethereal mist clinging to its pale, perfect walls, and its slender spires twinkled with magick under the afternoon sun.

Odd of the Yllanfalen, I thought. All this astonishing beauty and glory, and they treated it as a party pad.

I’d seen no sign of an entrance as we rode up to the imposing palace, but Ayllin led us away from the splendid frontage and around the side. There, hidden between two slim pilasters, was a tall, narrow door.

Or, it would have been were it not filled in with white bricks.

Ayllin retrieved a set of syrinx pipes of her own, a pair that looked wrought from quartz. Her song echoed upon the air, a mere handful of notes that rang out clear and sharp. As the sounds died away, the slender arch shimmered and became a door of white oak wood.

‘Thank you,’ said Ayllin gravely, and the door swung slowly open.

In we went.

‘Who were you thanking?’ I asked as we filed into a spacious antechamber, cool and dim, its walls all twined about with pale-leaved vines.

‘The sprites,’ she said. ‘They do not often show themselves.’

‘They’re the keepers of the doors?’

‘Among other things.’

I remembered the woman in the music shop. She’d sold me a garden song, on the grounds that the sprites liked it. I tucked these bits of information away. If sprites grew gardens and kept doors for the Yllanfalen, what else might they do? What might they know?

I also did my best to commit Ayllin’s door-opening sprite-song to memory.

Ayllin paused in the midst of the chamber, and smiled at the parade of unicorns that had followed us inside. ‘You do not wish to trail after us all the way to the lake,’ she told them. ‘There are stairs.’

The night-black stallion, for whom I knew no name, stamped one hoof, and shook his great head.

‘There is grass outside,’ I offered, without much hope. Addie’s greedy heart beat only for chips. Her friends probably had unusual tastes, too.

Still, Mr. Midnight turned and ambled away again, followed by a goldish-coloured mare and a creature the colour of raspberry meringue. Addie stood her ground.

I hugged her around her velvety-soft neck. ‘Love you for your loyalty, but you should go too. Enjoy the sun. Chips coming later.’

Addie shook out her mane, lipped at my sleeve, and finally went away. Did I imagine that flick of the tail in Ayllin’s direction as she strutted past? Was it really as dismissive as it looked?

It occurred to me that my faithful friend did not quite trust Ayllin, and I wondered why.

The lady in question had not waited to witness the departure of the unicorns. She was already halfway across the room, walking purposefully, my mother in hot pursuit. There was a similarity in their no-nonsense stride, I noticed with interest.

Jay beckoned. ‘Come on. She’ll be fine.’

‘Oh, I know. She’s made of concrete, diamonds and solid steel. Nothing can touch her.’

‘Sort of like you, then?’

I blinked. ‘No. Well, maybe the diamonds part. I wouldn’t mind that.’

‘They do sparkle,’ Jay agreed.

‘Gloriously.’ We followed Ayllin and Mother to the far side of the room, down a spacious passage beyond, and then Ayllin started down a wide staircase of polished, if dusty, wood.

Only then did I recall a detail that had glided past me before.

The lake was under the palace, and we were rapidly descending underground.

‘I feel you should know,’ I called, hastening to catch up. ‘There are—’

‘Lindworms,’ growled my mother. ‘I’m telling you.’

‘They won’t come this far,’ said Ayllin airily, her pace not slowing one whit.

A feral roar shook the stonework, attended by a great, deep rumbling in the walls and floor.

‘I—’ began Ayllin, and faltered. ‘How did it get so—!’

She got no further, for an enormous lindworm burst into view, scales glittering darkly over its sleek wyrm hide, jaws agape. Ayllin gave a shriek — and disappeared in a cloud of dust, earth and lindworm.

Turn page ->

‘Right, then,’ I said, searching in vain for somewhere to stuff my new collection of music. ‘New plan?’

‘Find the lyre-thief,’ said Mother promptly.

‘You think it was stolen?’ said Jay.

‘Sounds like it.’

‘By whom?’

‘How should I know?’

Jay did his arms-folded-and-staring thing. ‘It occurs to me that you might have been the last person to see that lyre.’

‘If I was, why would I be looking for it now?’

‘Are you looking for it now?’

‘Why else would I be here?’

Jay shrugged.

Mother gave a sigh, and rubbed at her eyes. ‘It’s possible that it went missing on the night that I saw it,’ she allowed. ‘But if it did, it certainly wasn’t me that took it.’ She paused. ‘Not that I wouldn’t have, given half a chance. It had that effect on people.’

‘What effect?’ Jay said, looking at Mother intently.

She shrugged. ‘You couldn’t see it, and hear it played, without wanting it. That’s why they kept it in a vault, I suppose.’

‘The effect is long-lasting, it seems,’ said Jay.

‘In that I still want it, three decades later? Mm.’

That noncommittal mm at the end sounded off to me. ‘Is there anything you haven’t told us, Mother dear?’ I said. ‘Is this only about the lyre?’

‘What do you mean?’

I mimicked Jay’s folded-arms posture and icy stare. ‘What about the lyre-player that you mentioned?’

‘Could he have taken it?’ said Jay.

Mother spread her hands. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps he could have.’

‘Who is he?’ I prompted.

‘I never knew his name.’

‘That’s going to make it pretty difficult to find him, then, isn’t it?’

‘Few people can play a lyre like that. It can’t be that hard to track him down.’

I felt like grabbing my mother and shaking her silly. ‘Mother. Please. Just tell us the whole story.’

Mother gave me a tight-lipped nope look.

‘Ves,’ said Jay. ‘I know this is a highly inappropriate question, but…’

‘But?’

‘How old are you?’

‘Thirty—’ I stopped.

‘Thirty-one,’ said Mother. ‘And a bit.’

My mouth felt suddenly dry. ‘And how long ago was this wild party you’ve never forgotten?’

She smiled, very faintly. ‘Thirty-two years, or thereabouts.’

There followed one of those pauses people call pregnant. In this case, it was pregnant with an imminent explosion courtesy of me. ‘No,’ I said, backing away. ‘I know my father. His name is Richard Rosser and he’s a dragon photographer. Last known location somewhere in Croatia.’

‘It probably is Richard,’ said Mother.

‘Probably?’

‘I’ve never been certain. And that’s eaten away at me over the years.’

I said a few inarticulate things at considerable volume.

Jay, rather uncharacteristically, came my way and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. ‘Calm,’ he said. ‘Everything will be fine.’

I breathed a bit. Fine. Everything would be fine. ‘So I might be the daughter of Richard Rosser, absentee father extraordinaire and who could blame him considering I’m only probably his daughter, or my dad might actually be some kind of faerie lyre-player.’

‘Yeah. Also,’ said Mother.

‘Ohgod,’ I said.

‘I’m not totally sure he isn’t King Evelaern.’

If my previous explosion was colourful, the next one was still more interesting. I may have turned purple in the face. Mother even put up her hands to ward me off, like I might have hit her or something. That’s how livid I was. (No, of course I didn’t hit her).

Jay hung onto me as though I might levitate with pure fury otherwise. ‘Ves,’ he said, soothingly (he had to say it a few times before it registered with me). ‘Ves. He’s not King Evelaern. The king’s dead, remember? Everyone says so.’

Mother snorted. ‘And if everyone is saying something then it must be true.’

‘There has been way too much royalty in my life lately,’ I spat, with venom. ‘First sodding Baron Alban’s a sodding prince, then Torvaston the Second’s a runaway absentee monarch with a bad magick habit, and now I’m a faerie princess?’

‘You probably aren’t,’ said Mother.

‘Probably?!’

‘That’s what I’d like to find out. Wouldn’t you?’ She looked blandly at me, with that unshakeable calm of hers that I’ve always envied. If someone had given my mother this kind of news, she would have thought it over in silence, nodded and said, ‘Interesting.’

I tried it. ‘Interesting.’

‘Isn’t it?’

Jay said, ‘So this is why you really brought Ves in?’

‘Pretty much. Though the fact that she’s got those pipes is a highly convenient coincidence. Or then again, what if it isn’t?’

‘A coincidence?’

‘Right. Who’d that unicorn be more likely to give the King’s pipes to than his daughter?’

We all looked at the unicorn in question, who was unconcernedly dozing in the sun.

‘So you found out that I had those pipes,’ I said, more calmly. ‘Is that when you started this crazy mission to get back into the Yllanfalen kingdom?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay. And why do we need Jay?’

‘Hey,’ said Jay.

I patted his arm. ‘No offence meant. I mean, my execrable parent made rather a point of my bringing our Waymaster along.’

‘We need Jay in case your maybe-father’s not here,’ said Mother. ‘It’s been decades. I’m hoping he’s still somewhere in these parts, but if he’s not, we’ll need a whirly wizard.’

‘Whirly wizard,’ Jay repeated. ‘I like it.’

Mother flashed him a swift grin. ‘Shall we get on, then?’ she said, briskly business-like.

I leaned on Jay for a second as every organ I owned sank into my boots. Then I straightened. ‘Fine, sure. Let’s go and turn the life of one Cordelia Vesper upside down.’

‘Mine, too,’ said Mother.

‘Fun for all the family,’ said Jay.

When the lady at the shop said theirs was a musical society, she really wasn’t kidding. Finding the lyre-player turned out to be not so much looking for a needle in a haystack as looking for a needle in a needlestack.

We went into every shop we saw, especially those with a musical bent, and asked after lyre musicians. Every single one furnished us with a long list. We asked after the moonsilver lyre, too, only to receive the same news we’d heard before: that lyre is lost. Gone. Missing for years, lost for decades.

Mother began asking about the party that lived so vividly in her memory, and the man who’d played the moonsilver lyre on that night.

Rather a mistake.

‘That must have been the Feast of Luirlan,’ everybody said — except for those who called it Anhaernyll’s Day, or Ellryndon, or something-or-other else. ‘Anyone can play the moonsilver lyre at the Feast of Luirlan.’

‘But nobody played it like the man I’m looking for,’ Mother insisted. ‘He was like… like a god.’

She won herself a nice selection of strange looks, but no real information. Not even when attempting to describe him. A tall, graceful man with pale skin and rich brown hair worn on the long side? Dressed in an embroidered tunic, with a blue jewel at his throat? We saw at least half a dozen men fitting that approximate description inside of an hour.

‘This is hopeless,’ I said at last. ‘We could do this all week and get nowhere. Are you sure you don’t remember the man’s name, Mum?’

‘People weren’t bothering so much with details, that night.’

‘Right.’ I mentally brushed aside the images conjured of my mother, deep in dissipation. ‘You know, if he was secretly King Evelaern not being as dead as generally supposed, I feel like that’s a thing people would notice.’

‘There’s no one to beat the Faerie at glamour,’ said my mother. ‘He’d be keeping a low profile.’

‘Why?’ I retorted. ‘Because he got bored with being the ultimate lord of a faerie kingdom?’

‘Maybe he did,’ said Jay. In response to my look of enquiry, he added, ‘Alban doesn’t seem to be enjoying the idea very much, does he?’

‘You know Prince Alban?’ said Mother sharply.

‘Recent acquaintance. Anyway—’

My mother gave a long whistle. ‘You’re on the rise, my girl.’

‘You don’t know the half of it,’ said Jay, grimly.

‘Let’s shelve that topic for another time, shall we?’ I interposed. ‘One incredibly complicated personal problem at a time, if you please. Let’s get back to maybe-Dad. If we can’t find him by description, we’ll have to play detective.’

‘The lyre,’ Jay said.

‘Right. We have one missing artefact of improbably enormous power, and at least some reason to think that your erstwhile lover might know something about that. Therefore: if we find out what became of the lyre, maybe we’ll find the player, too.’

Mother looked sceptical, but she nodded. ‘Which means what?’

‘I knew all those Nancy Drew novels would come in handy someday.’

‘We’re hiring Nancy Drew? Cordelia, you do know she isn’t real?’

‘We’re going to find the lyre through detective work,’ I said, shooting Mother Dearest a look of supreme annoyance. ‘I’m Nancy Drew.’

Mother rolled her eyes.

‘You can be George.’

‘Remind me which adventure featured George losing a hand.’

‘Details.’

‘Don’t tell me I’m Ned.’ Jay took a step back.

I felt faintly injured at that. ‘You don’t have to play with us if you don’t want to.’ Then my brain caught up with the implications of that sentence. ‘Wait. You’ve read Nancy Drew?’

‘Who hasn’t?’

I beamed at him, all injury forgotten. ‘Forgiven.’

Jay brushed this aside. ‘All right, lady sleuth. Where do we start?’

‘Hm. Well. Since no one can agree as to when was the last time the lyre was played — and that’s hardly surprising if it was many years ago — then maybe we start with the last place it was known to occupy.’

‘The vault,’ said Jay.

‘The one which that nice lady at the music shop specifically discouraged us from bothering to enquire about.’

‘Significant?’

‘Could be. I mean, it seems like the best time to wander off with the lyre would be during one of those feast days, when it’s no longer under lock and key. But you heard what all those people said. Anyone can play the moonsilver lyre on days like those, and probably a lot did. You don’t think that would maybe be a bad time to try to take it? When everyone’s waiting their turn to play? If your turn came up and you promptly did a runner with the lyre, I think someone would notice.’

‘Fair point,’ said Jay. ‘So it could have been lifted from the vault after all.’

‘Most likely. No one’s been saying that a thief took it and ran, they’re just saying that it’s not in the vault anymore. So, I want to see that vault.’

‘Great.’ Jay subjected the square we were standing in to a brief, business-like survey. ‘Where is it?’

‘Really good question.’

Turn page ->

And so, we went rolling up to the distant Yllanfalen town with an entourage of meadowlands creatures and a mantle of magickal music. One of the more exhilarating experiences of my life, without a doubt.

Shame that our arrival met with only the echoing silence of deserted streets.

Not quite empty, in fact, but close. The silvery gates stood open; we entered a pretty, ancient town, its buildings as tall, slender and elegant as the few inhabitants we saw. I’ve rarely seen a more verdant settlement, either: climbing vines clambered up every wall, twined with relish around chimney-pots and window frames, and carpeted some part of the stone-cobbled streets to boot. Many of them were in full bloom as well, opening flurries of azure, lavender or ice-white flowers to the sun. The place smelled heavenly.

But it was not populous. We travelled the length of one narrow, winding street before we saw anybody at all, and then we saw only a woman going into what appeared to be a shop. She barely glanced at me, in all my magickal glory.

When the next few people we passed exhibited the same utter lack of interest, I gave up playing.

‘Well,’ said Jay. ‘That was unexpected.’

I nodded, feeling crestfallen and trying not to show it. Honestly, who were these people? Did colourful young women so often prance through the town, wafted on a tide of magick and melody and pursued by an entourage of adoring creatures? Surely not. I couldn’t believe it, not even of a place one might reasonably term a part of Faerie.

Jay elbowed me. ‘Ves.’

I looked where he was pointing. A lady came towards us down the street — definitely a lady, not just a woman, for she was draped in the finest fabric money and magick can procure, and walked with the grace of a queen. She was decked in jewels to a degree bordering upon tasteless, at that.

Of all her ornaments, it was her necklace that caught, and held, my attention, for strung on prominent display upon a light silver chain was a set of tiny syrinx pipes. Hers were the colour of brass, not silver like mine, but in every other respect they were identical.

‘Um,’ I said. ‘Mother?’

Mother dearest stood in silence for a while, watching the ethereal lady pass. Her face registered something very like personal offence.

I kid you not, tiny flowers bloomed where the lady’s feet had lately trod.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘What’s the Faerie Queene doing wandering the streets of an Yllanfalen backwater all by herself?’

‘I told you,’ said Mother. ‘They have no monarchs anymore.’

‘Are you sure? Because you don’t seem to have seen the duplicate-pipes thing comi—’ I broke off because Jay elbowed me again. ‘Ow. What?’

‘Incoming,’ he said, turning me around to face a side-alley adjoining the street upon which we stood. There came another denizen of Faerie, a man this time, wearing long jewel-green robes. He had stars in his hair and magick in his eyes and he, too, bore a set of syrinx pipes on a ribbon around his neck. Gold, this time.

I groaned. ‘New plan?’

My mother looked from my silvery pipes to the gold ones worn by the Faerie-King-Who-Probably-Wasn’t, and sighed. ‘It’s just possible these aren’t King Evelaern’s pipes after all,’ she allowed.

‘You think?’

The next half-hour confirmed the hypothesis beyond doubt, for we found every inhabitant of that impossible town to be as dripping in grace and glory as those early few, and many of them had pipes. Too many.

‘What the bloody hell is this place?’ said Jay after a while. ‘These people are unreal.’

I had to agree. I’m not given to feelings of inadequacy, but when you’re a plain, ordinary human (fabulously magickal hair excepted) surrounded by such ethereally beautiful beings, it is difficult to help feeling somewhat diminished.

Even my mother felt it, what with her filthy clothes and hair and her wounded arm. That’s saying something. Mother is usually impervious to such trifles as appearance.

‘Enough dithering,’ I said after a while, having arrived at a central square dominated by a lofty white clocktower. ‘I’m going to ask—’ I stopped. An open doorway to my left offered a peek into a small shop premises, what probably passed for humble in this peculiar place. Hanging from the rafters was an array of tiny objects which sparkled in the sun.

I veered inside.

‘These pipes,’ I said to the proprietor.

‘Yes?’ She was rather taller than me, and (to my chagrin) much better dressed. I was wearing baggy trousers and trekking boots; she wore a flowing sky-coloured gown with trailing ribbons, an array of starry jewels, and she had fireflies glimmering in her hair.

Gods damnit.

‘What are they?’ I said, waving my own about. ‘Why does everybody have them?’

She looked me over in a none too friendly fashion, then turned her attention to Mother, and Jay. ‘Visitors?’ was all she said.

‘As you see.’

‘And how did you come here?’

Jay and I swapped a look that said, cripes, good question.

So it fell to Mother to say: ‘Through the Old King’s Halls.’

The ethereal goddess’s interest sharpened. ‘And how came you there? Those halls have long been closed.’

‘Through a portal. Don’t worry, it is well hidden in Britain proper. No one’s going to find it.’

‘Except for you.’

‘Well. I was looking rather hard.’

The proprietor’s forbidding frown did not in the smallest degree lessen — until she looked again at my pipes. ‘How came you by those? It is too much to imagine that anybody gave them to you.’

‘Someone did, in a manner of speaking,’ I said. ‘Just not today.’

Apparently tired of wasting words on me, the lady merely raised one pale brow.

‘A unicorn,’ I supplied.

‘A unicorn,’ she repeated.

‘Yes.’

‘Gave a rare set of skysilver pipes to a human.’

I was beginning to feel that these beauteous people were somewhat xenophobic. ‘That’s right. Ten years ago, or thereabouts.’

‘Eleven,’ said Mother.

‘What?’

‘It was eleven years ago.’

‘How do you know? You only found out like, last week—’

Mother directed a quelling look at me, effectively shutting me up. ‘I’ve known for a while.’

‘I—’

‘Can you play them?’ interrupted the lady.

I blinked. ‘Of course I can play them. Do you think any halfway sane witch would just sit on a Treasure like these for eleven years?’

She folded her arms, silent. Her look said: oh really?

So I played.

‘Ves,’ sighed Jay after about twenty seconds. ‘You’re not seriously— that isn’t—’

He gave up.

I played on. What, I’m compelled to play faerie music or something? What’s wrong with John Farnham? I’d got halfway through the chorus of You’re the Voice when the lady waved a hand. ‘Enough.’

I played a few bars of Tears for Fears, but didn’t get as far as the chorus as she growled, ‘Stop!’ and glared at me.

I stopped.

‘You play well,’ she said, possibly through gritted teeth.

I checked her perfect ears for signs of bleeding. Nope.

‘So, the pipes?’ I said. ‘We’ve scarcely seen a soul who wasn’t wearing a set.’

‘We are a musical society.’

‘I guessed that much.’

‘Could King Evelaern’s pipes really call up the winds?’ said my mother abruptly.

The proprietor looked sharply at Mother. ‘So the stories say.’

‘You don’t know for sure?’

‘They have not been played since the King’s passing.’ Her eyes strayed to the pipes in my hand, as did mine. I began to doubt again. Were these the King’s pipes? Had they passed out of Yllanfalen knowledge because Addie had been keeping them? ‘It is possible that the winds responded to the King’s magick, rather than the pipes,’ she continued, without commenting upon mine.

‘Perhaps that’s so,’ agreed Mother affably.

The proprietor-lady smiled, for the first time. ‘We have a fine range of music for syrinx pipes,’ she said, and glided away to an oak-wrought rack filled with sheet music scribed elegantly upon thick paper. ‘Perhaps you would enjoy expanding your repertoire?’

A sales pitch? Seriously? I was about to say no, but Mother forestalled me. ‘Delightful,’ she said firmly, and to my surprise fished a quantity of silvery coins out of a pocket in her begrimed trousers. They were no type of currency I’d ever seen, but she poured half of them into the proprietor’s hands and they were accepted with a gracious nod. ‘Might you have some recommendations for my daughter’s interest?’

‘Certainly.’ The lady extended her slender, perfect hands and selected a few sheets. ‘Llewellir is a song for sleep. Very popular with insomniacs. Syllphyllan, a favourite with gardeners and orchard-tenders, as the sprites adore it. Ah yes, Yshllyn Ara Elenaril is a fine choice, if you are interested in weather magick? I cannot promise the winds, but it has been known to muster a little rain on occasion.’ She handed all these to me, and considered the rack for a thoughtful moment. ‘One more. Ellyall dy Iythran, a song for the stars.’

That last made little sense to me, and as I accepted the page in question from her I opened my mouth to enquire.

‘What about lyres?’ said Mother, forestalling me. ‘Do you sell those?’

‘Naturally,’ said the gracious proprietor.

‘I’m looking for something in moonsilver.’

That sharp look came again. ‘You are well informed as to the old tales, aren’t you? Only one such lyre was ever made.’

My mother gave a smile I can only describe as sharkish. ‘Can I buy that one?’

‘It is not for sale.’

‘Why not? I have money.’

‘I daresay, but none among the Yllanfalen would sell you King Evelaern’s Lyre, even if we could.’

Mother’s ears pricked up. ‘Cannot you?’

‘That is lost.’

‘But it wasn’t lost thir—’ Mother stopped.

‘Yes?’ prompted the lady.

‘Nothing.’

I intervened, saying more graciously, ‘How did it come to be lost? Is there a story about that?’

‘That is not known,’ she said.

‘Where did it used to be kept?’ Mother was insistent.

‘In a vault built for the purpose, in those very halls you claim to have but lately exited.’ She smiled coolly. ‘It is perfectly useless to go there, if that is what is in your minds. The vault is quite empty.’

‘Who was the last person to see the lyre?’ said Mother, getting right into detective mode.

‘I have not the smallest idea.’ The proprietor’s patience was wearing thin, her smile becoming strained. ‘Will that be all?’

‘Yes,’ I said hastily. ‘Thank you. Come along, Mother.’

‘A moment,’ said the proprietor, halting me in the process of striding out of the shop.

I turned back. ‘Yes?’

‘I would like to meet the unicorn who gave you those pipes.’

I met her gaze levelly. ‘Why?’

‘It is a remarkable tale.’

‘Also a true one.’

‘No doubt.’ Her tone suggested she was by no means so convinced as her words implied.

I paused to consider. If I summoned Addie, she would know I spoke the truth; and then what?

No idea. Right, then. Time for another exciting round of Trial and Error.

‘Come hither, then,’ I said, and led the way out of the shop. I’ve no doubt Adeline would follow me right into the store, and that would be about as successful as ye olde bull-in-a-china-shop scenario.

The moment the sun hit me, I played Addie’s song. Just hers, this time; no requests for companions layered in with the melody. I had the satisfaction of seeing our supercilious shopkeeper’s face register surprise, even incredulity — and Addie hadn’t even shown up yet.

She arrived a few minutes later, spiralling lazily out of a half-clouded sky. Trotting straight up to me, she whickered and bumped me with her soft nose.

‘I haven’t got any more chips,’ I whispered. ‘Sorry.’

Adeline gave an unattractive snort.

‘Where,’ said the proprietor softly, ‘did you learn that song?’

I opened my mouth to answer, and realised that I had no idea. ‘It was the first song I played,’ I said. ‘When I first set the pipes to my lips.’

‘You had no skill with the syrinx before?’

‘I’d never so much as seen a set before.’

‘I see.’ The lady looked me over slowly, and then gave the same wondering look to pretty Adeline. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and walked back into her shop.

‘I’m not sure what I’ve just done,’ I admitted to Mother and Jay.

‘Given her something to think about,’ said Mother.

I’d hoped that showing off Addie would have answered a question or two. Was she King Evelaern’s favourite mount? Were these extra-super-special-and-magickal pipes or just the common-or-garden, incredibly-rare-and-rather-very-magickal variety? Inquiring minds were not to be satisfied today.

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In all my decade at the Society, I don’t think I’ve ever been on a proper, old-fashioned hero quest before. Deserted halls! Monsters! An artefact of great power!

Course, when Frodo and Sam set out to destroy the ring, they numbered nine, and one of them was some kind of a demigod. In our Quest for the Lyre we numbered but three, and one of us was half-dead and missing body parts.

At least we weren’t heading into Mordor.

Hopefully.

‘Right, then,’ I said, wand and pipes at the ready. ‘Where’s the lyre?’

‘Good question,’ said mother.

‘I thought you said you’d seen them?’

‘Years ago, and the circumstances were unusual.’

‘Namely?’

‘Well.’ Mother seemed absorbed in the study of her right toe. ‘The Yllanfalen hold great parties.’

‘Parties.’ I think my eyebrows did that sceptical-Jay thing. ‘Did I hear that right?’

‘Last time I set foot in these halls, they were celebrating some kind of summer festival. Music, feasting, etc. A man with eyes like spun clouds was playing the most extraordinary lyre…’ Mother trailed off, apparently lost in memory.

I waited.

‘That music,’ said Mother at last. ‘I’ve never heard its like, before or since. It could move the world.’ She gave a tiny smile, and added, ‘The lyre-player wasn’t half bad either.’

‘Mother.’

‘Sorry. Well, I may have somewhat over imbibed on the ambrosia and nectar, and fallen asleep under a table somewhere. When I woke, everyone was gone. In fact, the place was pristine — you wouldn’t think hundreds of fae had spent the night there in high revelry. All that was left was me, the wind, and the headache from hell.’

‘You aren’t telling me you’ve spent, what, two decades trying to find your way back to a party.’

‘Three,’ said Mother.

‘Three decades?’

‘A little more, even.’

‘For a party?’

She disconcerted me by drawing her arm out of her coat and clinically inspecting the stump where her hand once was. ‘It was a bit more important than that.’

Jay looked hard at my mother, and then, rather narrowly, at me.

‘What?’ I said to him.

‘Nothing. So this party. Whereabouts was it, exactly? Is this the same place?’

‘How should I know?’ said Mother.

‘As the only one of the three of us who’s set foot in here before—’

‘Once, thirty years ago. Actually no, that’s not quite true. I found another portal this one other time, but it led into some kind of mausoleum or something and there were no other exits. So, close enough.’

‘Well,’ I said, suppressing a sigh. ‘We can go looking for the lyre, or we can go looking for the lyre-player.’

Mother looked quickly at me.

‘What? People are probably going to be easier to track down than an inanimate object of unknown location. And since we’re here with little equipment and no food, finding something resembling civilisation might not be a bad idea anyway.’

‘You said they live out in the valleys?’ Jay said.

‘Typically,’ said Mother.

‘If these buildings are still used for ceremonies, the revellers probably aren’t all that far away. Let’s find a way out.’ Jay marched off with that lovely, purposeful stride of his.

‘And if we do find them?’ my mother called, hastening after him. ‘What then? Greetings, fair folk, we come to pinch your lyre, would you mind just handing it over?’

‘Who said anything about pinching it?’ Jay threw over his shoulder. ‘We’ll take a look at it, they’ll tell us this particular model is not for sale, and we’ll go home.’

I trotted after the pair of them. ‘I’m not sure that’s going to satisfy Mum,’ I called.

‘It will have to.’

I’d love to say that we wandered up and down dale (or hallway, in this instance), and happened conveniently upon a faerie town in no time at all. But when is life ever anything less than supremely complicated? We wandered and we wandered and we turned ourselves in circles. I can’t say I disliked this entirely, for wherever it was we’d got to was spectacularly beautiful. I could well believe it to have been a royal palace at one time, for it had all the necessary splendour, and the kind of ethereal glory one sees only in faerie halls. Windows twinkled like frosted starlight; bejewelled leaves on airy vines twined in vivid lustre around slender white pillars, and carpeted the floor; one chamber was devoted entirely to a shallow, serene pool of twilight-blue water, its bed littered with delicate, pearly shells. 

What we never found, however, included such ordinary arrangements as, say, kitchens. Either the Yllanfalen did not eat (which, by my mother’s accounts of revelry, seemed unlikely), or such mundanities were banished to the lower levels, with the storerooms. None of us wanted to go down there again, if we did not have to.

We didn’t find a way out, either. The nearest thing to it was a turret, high up in the northwest corner (so Jay said, I have no idea how he could tell). We toiled up spiralling stairs and came out at last into fresh, balmy air, all silvered, somehow, and colder than it ought by right to be. Before us lay valleys and hills, as my mother had said, but nothing so ordinary would do for a Faerie Dell. Starry meadows awaited us, strewn with flowers; fronded trees hung with clear lights gathered in copses here and there; and the sky had a tinge of green to it, like cool jade.

‘Nice,’ said Jay.

‘Understatement of the century,’ said I.

He shrugged. ‘My eyes have been out on stalks for hours. I’m jaded.’

I turned about, and spotted, in the distance, a scant shadow on the horizon that might have been a town. ‘People, ahoy!’ I said, and pointed.

‘Maybe.’ Jay scrutinised the view. ‘Want to help me shift some chairs up here?’

‘Up those stairs? Not really.’ The steps in question were narrow, cramped and twirly.

‘Come on.’ Jay took my arm and unceremoniously towed me after him.

‘Be right back, Mother,’ I said with a sigh.

Ten minutes and quite a bit of swearing later, we had three freshly-witched chairs assembled at the top of the turret. They weren’t our first choices. When flying, it’s always best to choose big, solid specimens if you can, with arms to cling to. These were delicate, with narrow seats and spindly legs. Decorative but deadly.

Needs must.

‘We’d better take it slowly,’ said Jay. ‘And keep your mother between us. She’s only got one hand to hang on with.’

‘Righto.’ I took hold of the tall back of mother’s chair with one hand, and Jay did the same. Up we went, and over.

It’s odd, perspective. As long as we were safely tucked behind the wall ringing the turret’s top, it didn’t look so very far to the ground. Once we had jumped over that barrier and cast ourselves upon the mercy of the winds, the ground seemed so terribly far away. I tried not to watch as it came closer and closer, my stomach clenching, my mouth dry, gripping my mother’s chair with all my might. Giddy gods, what if she fell off? What if I fell off?

Nobody fell off. At least, not until we had landed with an inelegant crash, and then we all fell off. At least we only had a foot or two to fall, by then.

‘All in one piece?’ I said, directing most of my solicitude to my mother, bashed up as she already was.

‘As close to it as I’ll ever get again,’ answered Mother.

Right. I picked up the chairs. ‘I think we’d better fly, or it’ll take us all day to reach that town. But we can stay low.’

‘I’m curious,’ said Jay. ‘Did you ever try this trick on a carpet?’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘You know how difficult it was not to fall off your chair just now?’

‘I remember it vividly.’

‘And you know how carpets have nothing to hold on to?’

‘Right.’

‘And you know how carpets aren’t at all solid and tend to flop all over the place?’

‘I see your point.’

‘It looks cute on screen, but in reality it’s a suicide mission.’

‘Chairs it is.’

Chairs it was, for an exhausting trip up the gentle but significant slope of an expansive hill. Its carpet of feathered grasses tickled my legs and made my mother sneeze. A few droplets of rain sailed down upon us from an almost cloudless sky, much to my puzzlement, and I shivered in my thin summer blouse. My right arm ached abominably from clinging on to my mother’s enchanted conveyance, and I could not help noticing the greyish tinge to her face. I was grateful beyond measure when we drew close enough to that shadow on the horizon to be certain of its identity as a town.

‘Let’s stop here,’ I said, when we were still some little distance away.

‘Why?’ snapped Mother.

‘Safe distance. The fae are tricky sometimes.’

‘I spent a whole night with them and emerged unscathed.’

‘You spent a whole night listening to their music and eating their food, and thirty years later you’re still trying to get back. Does that sound like “unscathed” to you?’

My mother went uncharacteristically quiet.

‘And you’ll note I politely glossed over the whole missing hand thing.’

‘Fine.’ Mother sighed. ‘What do you propose to do?’

I fished out King Evelaern’s skysilver pipes, if that’s what they were. ‘I thought I’d see if the fine folk over there would like these back.’

‘What?’

I was already off and striding, brandishing the pipes like a weapon. ‘I don’t know how they came to lose them, but if they’re as fond of that lyre as you suggest, I’d say they would be interested in getting a look at these.’

‘Cordelia—’

‘And when I tell them where I got them, and whistle up Adeline-and-friends to boot, I’d say we’ll be in business.’

‘Ves,’ sighed Jay.

I stopped at that. ‘Yes?’

‘You remember what your mother just said about those pipes and being reckless?’

I looked doubtfully at my pretty pipes. Glory. They did sparkle so beautifully in the faerie light. ‘You think she might have had a point?’

‘I think it just possible.’

I nodded slowly, thinking that over. ‘Ah well,’ I said with a shrug, and went off again.

‘Ves—’

‘At least there aren’t any lindworms out here,’ I called back.

‘Ves! You can’t give away your pipes!’

‘I said I’d see if they want them back. I didn’t say I’d hand them over.’

‘Oh, for—’ Whatever else Jay said was lost under a stream of muttered curses.

 ‘Have you two been working together long?’ I heard my mother say to Jay.

‘Nope.’

‘How long would you say it’ll be before you run screaming for the hills?’

‘About the middle of next week.’

‘I love you too,’ I retorted, and lifted my pipes to my lips. The moment I blew the first note, I knew something was different. The melody shimmered upon the air, expanded, soared; I felt it in every bone.

The Dell responded. The grasses blew up around my feet; birds descended from the skies, and hovered around me; an echo of the song built in the earth and stones beneath my feet, and thrummed along.

A rustle in the grass revealed the presence of squirrels, mice and other small meadow-creatures dashing along in my train.

Jay uttered another curse. ‘Great,’ he sighed. ‘Now she’s a sodding Disney princess.’

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