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‘You cannot simply bond with a Familiar at your own convenience,’ said Luan severely. ‘A living, magickal beast is not an artefact to pick up and drop at will, or a toy to play with whenever the mood takes you.’

‘I know that,’ I said, as patiently as I could. Honestly, he sounded like Miranda.

‘It takes months, and in some cases years, to forge a trusting relationship with a suitable animal,’ continued Luan.

‘No problem there,’ I said. ‘Addie and I have been going strong for a decade.’

That gave him pause, and a little of the disapproval smoothed out of his features. ‘Then, if the creature is willing, you may create a soul-bond via a magickal binding. It is common to employ a catalyst to complete this process.’

‘A binding?’ I said. ‘That sounds uncomfortably like the griffins and unicorns up at Vale.’

‘No. There are great differences. For one, it is not possible to force such a bond upon any creature. They may reject it at any time, and many do. For another, it is a link that goes both ways. You are not binding a unicorn into your personal service, as though it were some manner of slave. You will be at your Familiar’s service, too.’

‘And it is permanent, you said?’ asked Jay.

‘Naturally. Such a bond may only be severed by the death of one or both parties.’

I began to understand why Familiar-bonding was bordering upon banned in our Britain. Serious business.

Addie was no low-level magickal beastie. Unicorns were among the most powerful of creatures, surpassed only by the likes of dragons and griffins. I thought back to what Miranda had said. People try to take on creatures of far greater magickal potency than they can handle. The beast suffers, and the owner probably ends up as mincemeat.

Could I handle a unicorn? Or would I hurt Addie, and wind up as mincemeat?

Course, the link worked both ways, and I was presently a magickal powerhouse. Could Addie handle me?

‘And this is why we needed Miranda,’ I said to Jay, with a rueful smile. I’d resented Milady’s insistence on that particular point, but she’d been right. Again.

‘Right. We find Miranda and we make this happen,’ said Jay.

‘First, though, we retrieve Pup.’

We found my disgraceful Goodie Two-Shoes (hah) lying upside-down atop the Hyndorin Silver stash, belly turned up, paws limp, and a sublime grin upon her tiny houndy face. ‘Drunk on treasure,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘That’s our Pup.’

‘She looks like a felled dandelion,’ said Jay.

‘A dandelion of unusual size.’

The Silver storeroom was situated not far from Torvaston’s chambers, which I thought was likely not a coincidence. Jay had seen a flash of yellow fur as Pup whisked past, and followed her there.

I’d expected a stout room with a stout door and lots of security, but the Silver Stash had none of those things. The place was more of a spacious alcove, decorated with mosaic tiles and gilding and all that jazz, and the Silver occupied a depression in the floor. It shone softly, moon-pale, and seemed piled there more as a decoration in its own right.

‘Won’t somebody steal it, if you leave it out in the open like this?’ I said to Luan.

He looked oddly at me. ‘Somebody who?’

I was forgetting the layer upon layer of magick and illusion which protected their hideout from outside intruders. Nobody had penetrated all that guff in many a long year, so fair enough. And apparently they didn’t have a problem with their own citizens making off with the loot, for it was all still here.

I nudged one of Pup’s splayed-out paws with my toe, and she woke with a start.

‘Come on,’ I told her, looking meaningfully at the door. ‘Fun’s over.’

Pup whined, and flattened her ears.

‘I know, life is unspeakably hard. But you still can’t waltz off with all of Hyndorin’s worldly goods.’

She slunk down off her personal Treasure Mountain, and trailed over to me, tail drooping.

I felt like the worst person alive.

‘I’ll get you something shiny when we get home,’ I promised her, and patted her ears.

No response.

‘Parenting,’ said Jay. ‘It’ll break your heart.’

I stuck my tongue out at him. ‘We’re going,’ I informed them both, and checked to make sure I still had Torvaston’s scroll of exciting plans, plus Mauf. ‘My lord Evemer. We thank you most heartily for your time and assistance, for ourselves and also on behalf of Their Majesties at Mandridore.’

Luan bowed. ‘It is a pleasure to be of service to Their Majesties,’ he said, without conviction. Still harbouring doubts, was he? I couldn’t blame him, but that was too bad. No one’s life work ever did anyone any good gathering dust in a vault.

I pictured how delighted the Majesties in question were going to be, when we came back with the plans. And how pleased and interested Alban would be, when we showed them to him. How incredible Farringale would become, once released from the curse of the ortherex. The entire troll nation would be reunited with this vital piece of their magickal heritage. The entirety of our Britain could look forward to a stronger, more magickal future.

I’ve never done anything so important, or so satisfying, in my life.

When we left the tower and stepped out into what was left of the afternoon’s summery sunshine, I was walking on air.

I didn’t come down, even when we encountered Wyr on the doorstep and he was still a tree. If anything, he was settling in to his new, leafier life, for his rather formless shape of before had acquired some refinements. ‘He’s a chestnut,’ I informed Jay, inspecting the Wyr-leaves. ‘I think.’

Jay shook his head. ‘He’s nothing I recognise. He’s his own, unique kind of tree. A Wyr-tree.’

‘Are we leaving him like this?’

‘Do you have any idea how to change him back?’

I did not.

I did try, honest. As it turns out, you can give a Ves as much power as you like, but if she has no idea what to do with it, then nothing can help her.

‘He likes being a tree,’ I decided at last. ‘That’s the only possible explanation.’

‘Nothing to do with ignorance or ineptitude on the part of the enchanter,’ said Jay.

‘Nothing whatsoever.’

‘If you’re finished failing at reverse transmogrification, shall we go find the others?’ He stepped onto the lift-stone and I followed, pretending not to notice as Pup performed a second set of, er, ablutions around Wyr’s roots.

Hey, he was in no condition to mind.

‘Right, where did we leave the others?’ I said, as we arrived back at the base of the rocky promontory. A glance up revealed that it was a mountain again, or so it appeared; Torvaston’s spectacular tower was gone from my sight.

I experienced a brief stab of regret. I may have had no interest in remaining in the Hyndorin Enclave forever, but in all probability I would never see that tower again.

Anyway. ‘Thataway,’ I said, waving an arm in what I imagined to be Alban’s general direction.

‘No, I don’t think that was one of them,’ said Jay, glancing about in that keen-eyed way he had when he was getting his bearings. He set off after a moment, and Pup and I trailed after him.

Ten minutes later, though, we’d walked and walked without coming across anybody at all. ‘Who are we looking for just now?’ I called to Jay.

‘Em was out here,’ he said with a frown.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Positive.’ Was that a trace of irritation I detected? Fair enough, if it was. Who was I to question Jay’s sense of direction?

But after another five minutes, I could see that Jay, too, was beginning to doubt. ‘Let’s try for Alban,’ he said, and changed direction.

I smothered my unease. I could have sworn we had passed right through the glade in which we had previously left Emellana; I’d seen a pair of withered orchard trees that looked familiar. But what did I know? I never could remember very well what I had or hadn’t seen. I was probably wrong.

But for Jay and I both to be so vague was not at all common, and when we failed to find Alban either, I began to feel worried.

‘This is odd,’ said Jay, stopping. ‘This is where Alban was standing. I could swear to it.’

‘Something’s going on,’ I said. I wouldn’t doubt Jay twice. He had proved the superiority of his navigational skills time and time again.

‘It might be nothing,’ Jay said. ‘After all, once we were inside the tower they didn’t need to stay put. They probably got bored of standing in the same spot, and went off somewhere.’

‘Likely true, but where? Surely they’d gather somewhere near where we were likely to come out.’

‘That would make sense,’ said Jay.

‘Where else would they go? There isn’t anything else here.’ Except natural beauty, but unless the three of them had developed a sudden passion for any particular tree or hillock, I couldn’t see why they would have wandered off.

My sense of foreboding deepened.

‘Right,’ said Jay. ‘They obviously aren’t where we left them, and just as obviously did not choose to wait near the tower. So. Where else could they be?’

‘Somewhere we have yet to explore,’ I said. ‘It isn’t an especially large valley. Where haven’t we been?’

Jay took off without comment, and I hurried to catch up. He walked much faster this time, driven by the same alarm I felt. It’s probably nothing, I told myself again, but we would both of us be much more comfortable when the mystery was solved and we were reunited with our friends. They were probably sunbathing on a nice rock somewhere, feasting upon orchard fruits that looked like apples but smelled like cherries.

I kept my eyes peeled (what a disgusting saying) and my ears open (bizarre: who closes their ears?), but nothing met my searching gaze but more verdure, and I heard only stray birdsong, and the rustling of tall grass in the breeze.  

I ached to hear Alban’s voice. Just one little word would do.

‘We’ve lost them,’ I moaned after a while. ‘The Court lent us one of their most powerful practitioners and the heir to the throne, and we’ve lost them.’

‘Not forgetting Miranda,’ said Jay. I’d still love to forget Miranda more often if I could, but not like this.

It was then that Pup’s hunting instincts kicked in. Throughout our fruitless search, she had ambled along at my heels, apparently uninterested in anything going on around her. Still sulking about the Silver Stash, I’d thought. But she got a whiff of something electrifying, and abruptly took off at a full gallop.

I exchanged a look with Jay, and we broke into a run, pounding through the grass after her.

‘It’s nothing,’ I panted after a while, as we ran and ran and encountered only more grassy meadow. ‘Pup’s just having one of her mad moments—’

I stopped dead and shut my stupid mouth, for the view changed. An instant before, I’d seen only an expanse of tall grass dotted with wildflowers, stretching as far as the horizon.

Then, between one step and the next, a building loomed out of the empty air. A familiar building.

‘Jay,’ I whispered. ‘What the giddy gods is Ashdown Castle doing here?’

I pelted towards Jay and Luan, dying for a glimpse of the scroll for myself. Plans for the Heart of Hyndorin! A paint-by-numbers how-to I could take back to Mandridore, from which they could build their very own magickal regulator.

Farringale would be saved.

The magick of the sixth Britain would be saved.

We’d done it.

But as I approached, Luan turned away from me, hiding the drawings behind his very broad back. ‘Hey,’ I objected. He’d pushed Jay out, too, and stood hogging all that delicious arcane knowledge for himself.

‘This must be destroyed,’ he said.

My jaw dropped. ‘What?’ I squeaked.

‘For the same reason that His Majesty destroyed the Heart itself.’ Luan began rolling up the scroll again, handling it with exquisite care. I wondered why he bothered, if he was just going to burn it or something. ‘If it should fall into the wrong hands…’

Hard to argue with that. If it fell into the wrong hands, the consequences could be bad.

Well, so what. The same went for literally every good thing ever known to man or beast. Or troll.

‘You can’t destroy it,’ I said, exchanging a look of pure horror with Jay. ‘It’s too important for that.’

‘Precisely,’ said Luan, unmoved.

‘Torvaston left this here on purpose,’ I said. ‘He went to a lot of trouble to leave a trail to it, too. Why did he do that, if someone wasn’t supposed to follow it someday?’

Luan hesitated, but only briefly. ‘His Majesty had not, at that time, beheld modern Vale.’

‘No, but he saw it coming. That’s why he destroyed the original. But he still thought it worthwhile to leave this here for us.’

Luan said nothing.

‘He knew magick would decline in our world,’ I said. ‘His writings suggest it. He left the keys to get in here in our Britain, and I think that’s because he left this here for us. We were supposed to find it someday, and use it. To mend the damage done to Farringale. To reverse the decline of magick. To fix things, Luan! Don’t take that from us. Please. We have to get this back to Their Majesties at Mandridore. They have a right to it, as Torvaston’s heirs.’

Luan looked at me. Instead of the anger or disapproval or even fear I had expected to see in his face, I saw profound sadness. ‘This was once the grandest, the most marvellous of all the Enclaves of Britain,’ he said. ‘Without contest or question. It was a place of… pure wonder. All that’s gone now.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s still a place of pure wonder. We’ve seen nothing like it.’

He shook his head. ‘It is nothing to compare to its heights. Nothing at all. And that is because of the Heart. The acrimony that it caused, the conflicts, the destruction…’

‘The Heart may be the reason for Hyndorin’s downfall,’ I said. ‘But it was also the power behind its days of glory. Without the Heart, neither the one nor the other could ever have happened. Luan, if you destroy this, you ensure that neither your Britain nor mine will ever see its like again.’

‘Especially ours,’ put in Jay.

I gave him a moment to think. We were getting somewhere, I could see it.

Then I said, ‘This is what His Majesty wanted.’

Luan hesitated, and sighed — and offered the scroll to me.

I grabbed it quick, with both hands, before he could change his mind. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Future generations will worship at the shrine of you.’

Jay frowned at me.

Right. Poor taste.

Hastily, I tucked the precious scroll into my shoulder-bag. I wanted it out of Luan’s sight, before he could work himself back around to another fit of opposition. Out of sight, out of mind?

Also, I wanted Mr. Mauf and Mr. Scroll to get acquainted. I didn’t yet know what Mauf had contrived to absorb down in that old workshop, but if he compared whatever he’d got with the contents of the new scroll, the results might be quite interesting.

Time for a speedy subject change. ‘About Pup,’ I said to Jay. ‘I don’t see her up here. Whereabouts did you leave her?’

‘Silver stores,’ he said. ‘Which are…’ he looked blank, and shrugged. ‘Somewhere else. All this voluntary/involuntary teleporting has me confused.’

I directed a hopeful look at Luan.

‘Allow me to be quite clear,’ he said, and the disapproving tone was back. ‘You will not be leaving here with that scroll, and our stores of Silver.’

‘We have not the slightest wish to,’ I assured him, which was a total lie, because the second I set eyes on that “gigantic pile” of fabulously valuable Silver I knew I would want every single scrap of it. ‘All we want is to retrieve Pup, and get out of your hair.’

‘My hair?’

Oops. ‘Just an expression.’

‘We’re going home,’ Jay supplied.

‘Well, they’re going home,’ I amended.

‘You are staying?’ said Luan, swift with suspicion.

‘I suppose so.’

‘Where?’

‘I… don’t know.’ The prospect of being left behind while Jay and Alban and Em went home sent the bottom dropping out of my stomach. Where would I go? What would I do, stranded in the fifth Britain by myself?

‘We aren’t leaving without you,’ said Jay firmly, and I could almost have kissed him for that, except that it would never do.

‘You have to,’ I retorted. ‘Someone’s got to get this scroll to Mandridore, and quickly.’

‘Then first we need to fix you.’

 Fix me, like I was a broken refrigerator. Malfunctioning gadgetry, just see the repairman and all will be well.

I realised I was gazing at Jay with the Eyes of Hope, and hastily composed myself. ‘Do you think it’s possible?’

‘Ves. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from hanging around with you, it’s that every gods-damned insane thing imaginable is probably possible, if you can manage to be batshit crazy enough.’

My turn of phrase was rubbing off on Jay. ‘Are we batshit crazy enough?’

‘Always.’

My eyes filled momentarily with tears, rather to my shame. Sensible, unflappable, by-the-book Jay was volunteering to be a total madman for my sake.

My corrupting influence knew no bounds.

Jay gave a slight cough, and added, ‘Of course, we could use a little help.’ He was looking at Luan as he said it, the cheek. As though we hadn’t already complicated the poor Earl’s day enough.

Luan, unfortunately, looked nonplussed.

‘I have an idea,’ I said. ‘Magickal Silver absorbs magick, right? So how about you throw me head-first into that gigantic pile of yours and see how much of me comes out.’

Jay looked appalled.

‘It’ll be okay,’ I said, with a reassuring smile. ‘I’m pretty sure I’ll still have arms, legs and a head.’

‘No,’ said Luan. ‘I am sorry, but there is no known way to reverse the effects you refer to.’

I swallowed, for once in my life struck speechless. No way to reverse the effects. I was stuck forever. I would never see Home again. I’d have to spend the rest of my life living in Vale, just to be comfortable.

Only iron will kept me from bursting into tears and sobbing like a five-year-old all over Jay’s shirt.

Jay stared at me.

I can’t absolutely guarantee that my lip didn’t quiver, or that I didn’t look back at him with the lost look of a stray puppy.

I tried to be dignified, but news like that tends to cut a person off at the knees.

‘There has to be a way,’ Jay said, jaw set. ‘If we have to move a gods-damned mountain to get Ves home, we’ll do it.’

‘Jay—’ I began.

He cut me off. ‘Do you think Alban or Em wouldn’t say the same? We are not leaving without you.’ He enunciated the last six words clearly and with emphasis; clearly comprehensible, even for an idiot like me.

I took a shaky breath, and nodded. ‘Luan. You mentioned that some of you leave Hyndorin on occasion, but you implied that it wasn’t in order to visit another magick-drenched location, such as Vale.’

‘We go shopping,’ he said, with a twinkle. ‘Once in a while.’

‘In places of lesser magickal impact?’

‘Yes. Enclaves as — what did you call it? — magick-drenched as Hyndorin and Vale are not common, even in this Britain.’

‘How do you manage it, then? For if you live here with ease, you must be as magick-drowned as I am.’ I hoped. Either that or they were just used to dosing themselves with powdered unicorn horn every six hours.

Somehow I didn’t think that was it. Hundreds of years had passed. Generation after generation had lived here, and stayed here, even when they had little reason to remain.

‘The arts relating to the creatures known as Familiars,’ said Luan. ‘Are they still known about, in your Britain?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Well, yes. But it is rarely practiced, and bordering upon illegal, because we’re stupid about it.’ That was roughly what Miranda had said.

‘A deep bond with a suitable creature can be of great use,’ said Luan. ‘But such a bond should not be lightly entered into, for it is permanent, and it will change you.’

‘Change me?’ I echoed dumbly. I mean, I wanted to be changed, at this point, but that was vague.

‘A Familiar may enhance its bonded partner’s magick, or alternatively it may lessen it,’ said Luan. ‘This is because, once fully bonded with a Familiar, its magick becomes yours, and vice versa. The bond is one of shared magick, and it is absolute.’

So if I were overflowing with too much of it, I could pool my magick with my Familiar, reducing the excess upon myself and strengthening my beast. Or, the other way around.

‘But,’ cautioned Luan. ‘It is no easy thing to arrange. Understand that an ordinary domestic cat or dog, or any creature commonly kept as a pet, will not serve. Even the more common of the magickal breeds will not do.’

‘Not Pup, then?’ asked Jay.

Luan shook his head. ‘A nose-for-gold, however talented, has not the depths of magick necessary to serve well as a Familiar. I do not believe I have ever heard of such a bond being formed.’

I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. ‘How about… a unicorn?’

I waited, crossing my fingers behind my back.

Luan paused in thought. ‘Perhaps,’ he allowed. ‘Some are much diminished now. Those you will have observed at Vale, for example, are little better than cattle, poor creatures.’

‘But a unicorn of royal lines?’ said Jay, anticipating my line of thought.

‘Royal lines?’ said Luan, with a curious tilt of his head. ‘Is that what they are calling them now?’

‘Apparently. Could such a unicorn function as a Familiar?’

‘Indeed, yes,’ said Luan, and I could have cried with relief. ‘One of my sisters has such a Familiar.’

Milady’s words floated through my mind. And, Ves, if you can contrive to take your unicorn companion along, you may also find that a useful measure.

Ha. To say the least. Had she known how useful, when she’d said those words, and in what way? Or was it just a hunch?

Thank you, Milady, I told her in my thoughts. Thanks to her foresight, however it worked, I might actually get the chance to say that to her in person sometime soon.

‘Next question,’ I said. ‘Um. How does one go about bonding with a Familiar?’

To call our next destination a Royal Bedchamber would be to grossly understate the impact of the place.

It wasn’t fit for a king so much as a… well, a god. In size alone, it staggered me. Okay, Torvaston was a troll, and they aren’t short, but even so: how much space does one person need? We emerged in a chamber the approximate size of a football field (yes, I exaggerate, but not by much). Dominating the centre of that space was a bed large enough to sleep about thirty human-sized people. Its four posts were trees, crystalline and sparkling but clearly tree-shaped, and apparently alive. Canopies of cobwebby gauze hung about it, and its pillows and blankets had the kind of plushness a Ves could cheerfully sink into forever.

I’ve never seen an article of furniture so clearly scream magick!

The rest of the décor was of a piece with it. Lamps of contorted crystal hung from the ceiling and erupted from the walls, glowing under their own power; carpets covered the hardwood floor, their patterns and colours shifting as I looked at them; cabinets held artefacts safely behind glass, though every time I glanced their way I beheld a different array of objects.

Etc. If this was the lifestyle of a king in a magick-soaked enclave, I could definitely see its upside.

Luan walked through that room as though he walked in the presence of a god. His soft-footed, wide-eyed, reverential behaviour unnerved me. Did he think Torvaston was going to show up?

Was Torvaston going to show up?

‘You look petrified,’ Jay said, glancing at me.

I composed my features. ‘It’s the word “god” that did it,’ I said.

‘And?’

‘Any sane person is terrified of gods.’

‘Does that include the giddy kind you keep referring to?’

‘A degree of healthy irreverence is good for a person,’ I retorted.

Jay made no answer, save for his by-now-familiar eyebrow quirk that said whatever you say, Ves.

I shut my mouth.

Jay was right about the bedchamber more nearly resembling a museum. Like the rest of the tower (or as much as we had seen of it), it was meticulously well-kept, without a speck of dust or dirt anywhere. Considering these rooms had been sealed for centuries, however, that fact registered as highly unusual. Moreover, it had the air of a museum about it, of a place not merely dusted and swept but preserved. As though the effects of time had been, if not outright stopped, then at least slowed down.

Strong magicks indeed.

I wondered again why Torvaston had closed off this room, while apparently going to some trouble to preserve it. For whom? The chances that anyone would manage to follow his obscure trail of clues and oblique references and stray magickal bits-and-bobs were vanishingly small, which was why hundreds of years had passed before anyone had done so.

And I still felt like we were here more by some kind of fluke than by our own efforts.

Or by Milady’s possible flickers of clairvoyance. After all, it was she who had manoeuvred things so that we could keep our mischievous nose-for-gold Pup. It was Pup who had retrieved the scroll-case from Farringale, and brought it to me. It was Milady again who had brought in the Baron, and through him we had forged links with the Court at Mandridore — who had sent us out here. With Alban in pursuit, bearing just the things we needed to get into this room.

I shied away from concluding that anything like fate had brought us here; that would be absurd. But a somewhat manipulated run of “luck” certainly had. So then, why?

‘What’s in here that’s important?’ I said to Jay. Luan was on the other side of the room, still in a state of reverence. I half expected him to fall to his knees before an enormous, bejewelled chair that strongly resembled a throne. He’d probably die before he so much as considered sitting on it.

I, however, strongly wanted to plant my derriere on those sumptuous green velvet cushions.

I turned my face away from it, lest the temptation should overcome me.

‘Important?’ Jay said, frowning. ‘All of it, surely.’

‘As far as intriguing uses of magick go, and evidence of a delightful excess: yes. But I mean, what’s important to us in here.’

‘You mean, what would Milady want us to shamelessly make off with?’

‘No!’ I gasped, appalled. ‘What would Milady want us to… heroically liberate in the name of magick.’

‘My mistake.’

‘Hint: It’s unlikely to be anything with material value.’

‘So not the gigantic pile of magickal silver lying in a storeroom a ways nearby.’

‘Is it really gigantic?’

‘Relatively speaking. It’s enough to make a few lyres and snuff boxes, anyway.’

‘None of it looks like it might be a conveniently flat-packed magickal regulator, I suppose?’

‘Because they absolutely had IKEA for uniquely powerful artefacts in the seventeen hundreds.’

‘You never know.’

He grinned. ‘Yes, I do. And no, it doesn’t.’

‘Curse it.’

He looked around at Torvaston’s glamorous bedchamber, and shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Ves. Everything in here is dripping in gold. It could be anything or nothing.’

Most likely nothing, I thought, though my eye lingered on those cabinets. The curiously changeable nature of the contents intrigued me a little. What better way to protect objects of unusual value, than to make it impossible to identify what each object was?

Then again, it could also be an elaborate feint. If I were prone to thieving artefacts of great power — just for instance — the so-obviously magickal nature of all those carefully stored articles would attract me greatly. I’d be inclined to empty those cabinets forthwith, and might miss something more subtle.

Like… like a secret door, for example. Secret, but not because it was hidden. More because it was so subtle. Blandly mundane in the midst of such splendour, and half-hidden behind a cabinet to boot.

‘Did you go through that door?’ I asked Jay, pointing.

‘What door— oh.’ He blinked in its general direction. ‘I didn’t notice it before.’

‘Because you looked right past it, or conceivably because it wasn’t there before?’

Jay thought. ‘I honestly don’t know.’

‘I vote we investigate.’

‘Seconded.’

But as we ventured towards the door, it melted away.

There and then gone.

Jay took this in stride, which said a lot about his experiences with the Society since he’d joined us. Disappearing doors? All in a day’s work. He went up to the wall where the door had been, and felt around with his hands. ‘It’s really gone,’ he reported.

‘Right.’ I did a three hundred and sixty degree turn, scanning the room.

And spotted the slithery thing skulking behind an elegant console table, not far from the throne. Chair. Whatever. ‘There!’ I said, and ran for it.

This time, I almost made it before it began to fade. ‘No, you don’t,’ I said, and made a grab for the heavy silver (or Silver?) doorknob.

My fingers closed around it, and I yelped. It was cold, like ice fresh from the freezer. It hurt to touch it, but I grimly hung on, and threw my full body weight behind my efforts to haul it open.

Without much effect. A five-foot-barely-anything Ves doesn’t weigh all that much, I guess. The door fought me, inexorably squeezing itself closed. ‘Ow,’ I yelled, the doorknob burning my hands in that weird way that only ice can do.

Jay’s hands closed around mine, and suddenly the door’s trajectory was reversed. Inch by inch, we prised it open until Jay could get a foot in between it and the doorjamb.

There was no stopping him after that. He dragged the reluctant door open by sheer brute force, face thunderous, and finished the process off by way of a couple of rather savage kicks. ‘You can let go,’ he said, and dragged my hands away from the doorknob.

I relinquished it gratefully. Jay, standing squarely in the way of the door, wouldn’t let me go in until he’d turned my hands palm-up and checked them over.

‘Hurts?’ he asked.

I twitched my fingers. ‘Ow,’ I confirmed.

He glanced again at the door, and the thunderous look returned. Was he angry with it for burning my hands? ‘I’ve nothing to say in defence of the door’s conduct,’ I offered. ‘But in fairness, it was me who grabbed the handle like an idiot.’

Jay released me. ‘Whatever’s out here better be worth it.’

At first glance, it didn’t look like it. Stepping from Torvaston’s spectacular bedchamber into his hidden rooms was like going from a palace into a monastery. We beheld a simple scholar’s cell, white-walled, with an unpolished oaken floor and a single desk — the high-backed kind, once commonly used in cloister libraries.

I hastened eagerly towards that desk, my injury forgotten.

But only disappointment awaited me there. The desk was bare. No ancient quill-pen did I see, lying where Torvaston (presumably) had left it before he died. No stone inkwell sat waiting, filled with peculiarly fresh ink.

No books, scrolls or diaries lay open and inviting, filled with ancient secrets for Val to pore over.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said, searching in vain for signs of something interesting in that room. ‘Why was this place hidden and protected, if there’s nothing here?’

‘Well.’ Jay paced back and forth, his dark eyes scanning every inch of the walls and floor. ‘If the room itself was hidden and protected, does it not stand to reason that its contents might be as well?’

Hmm.

I devoted myself to a close scrutiny of the desk. I patted it all over with my hands, searching for signs of a hidden drawer. I knocked upon its panels, hoping for hollow sounds suggestive of a secret compartment.

Nothing.

‘What is it that you are doing?’ came Earl Evemer’s voice all of a sudden, and he sounded every inch an aristocrat. Grave, pompous, disapproving.

‘Looking for something significant,’ I answered, without stopping what I was doing. Having got this far, we weren’t stopping just because Luan wanted to treat Torvaston’s personal effects as religious relics.

‘Be careful,’ he snapped, as I knocked a little too hard on the heavy oak wood and made it rattle a bit.

‘I could set fire to this thing and it would be virtually untouched,’ I said, with faint annoyance. ‘They’re built to withstand the apocalypse, and this one no doubt has heavy magickal wards as well.’

Luan began to look like a harassed parent with two exhaustingly wayward offspring. ‘I begin to think—’ he said, but whatever he had begun to think was destined to remain forever unknown, for Jay’s cry of triumph interrupted him.

I looked up. Jay stood face-to-face with a plain, white-washed expanse of wall. He had his fingers in something. As I watched, he peeled back a section of the wall like it was wallpaper.

Which it wasn’t. I felt a surge of magick from his corner of the room; he was stripping away glamours like they were pasted on with glue.

I made a mental note to ask him how he’d done that, later.

Behind the glamoured wall, another door lay concealed, but this one was tiny — about two feet square, and positioned about seven feet off the floor.

Over Jay’s head, and well over mine.

‘I need a box to stand on, or something,’ said Jay, breathless with excitement, because above his head the door — crystalline and sparkling with magick — was slowly opening.

‘Allow me,’ said Luan severely. Before either of us could interfere, he reached up with ease and extracted the contents of the glamoured space in the wall.

My librarian’s heart beat quick, for it was a scroll, and a good one, too. Wide and fat, it contained a great deal of rolled-up parchment. It practically glowed with promise, but that might just have been my fevered imagination.

I stopped breathing as Luan slowly, carefully unrolled it.

‘These are plans,’ he said, in the hushed voice of awe.

‘Tell me they’re for the Heart,’ I blurted.

He didn’t so much as glance at me, his gaze glued to the parchment. ‘I… I believe that is exactly what they are.’

‘Not just any silver,’ said Jay helpfully. ‘I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same kind as the lyre.’

‘That is entirely—’ said Luan, and stopped. ‘What kind of a hound circumvents my defences and finds its way straight to the most valuable artefacts in the building?’

‘She’s a nose-for-gold,’ I said quickly, remembering too late that I had glossed over Pup’s presence before.

His face set into disapproving lines. ‘I think you said you were not treasure hunters?’

‘We aren’t. It’s just Pup that has a few bad habits…’

‘And what manner of scholar keeps a nose-for-gold?’

A fair question. ‘She’s an academic oddity where we come from,’ I said, trying my best smile.

‘We aren’t here to steal your silver,’ said Jay irritably. ‘We came looking for Torvaston’s project, that’s all.’

‘That,’ said Luan in a terrible voice, ‘is our silver.’

Jay blinked. ‘…Oh.’

So the “Heart” was a dismantled pile of Silver with a capital S, and it was lying in a storeroom somewhere in this largely-empty tower. I remembered myself telling Wyr he was welcome to plunder at will once we got inside, and winced. All right, I hadn’t thought the place would prove to be inhabited, but that was the best excuse I had for my reckless promise. A cache of something so frighteningly valuable and powerful must never be permitted to fall into the hands of someone like him.

Earl Evemer and his compatriots had successfully protected it for centuries. It was our unauthorised presence here that put it at risk.

Way to go, team.

‘We should go,’ I said.

Jay looked sharply at me. ‘Go?’

‘What we came for no longer exists,’ I said. ‘Mission over. We can go back to Mandridore and tell them it’s a no go.’

‘We?’

For a second, I’d forgotten my no-fly state. ‘Erm.’ I looked around. ‘Where is Pup? You left her with the Silver?’

‘If you’d like to try prising her off that stuff, be my guest.’

I sighed. ‘I am very sorry,’ I said to Luan. ‘If we can retrieve my disgraceful thief of a Pup—’ (and, come to think of it, my intellectual thief of a book) ‘—We will get off your lawn, and stop complicating your day.’

Luan held up a hand. ‘Not so fast.’

I stared. ‘What?’

‘I would like a look at that lyre, please.’

I dithered. I could hardly blame him for asking, but… I did not want to hand it over.

Then again, we stood here swearing blind we weren’t there to rob the place, and expected him to just trust our word, despite all apparent evidence to the contrary. It would be unbecoming to refuse to trust him for even five minutes with our articles of value.

I looked at Jay. He had hidden the thing; it was for him to decide whether or not to reveal it.

He looked quizzically back at me. I’m the new guy, his face (probably) said. Why are you making me decide, o mentor?

Because your guess is as good as mine, I signalled back.

He shrugged, and set the snuff box down. Which reminded me. ‘Hey, where in the tower did you get swept off to?’

‘Some kind of bedchamber,’ he said, counting downwards through the buttons on his shirt. ‘Or a museum. The place was practically preserved in aspic.’

A choked sound emerged from Luan.

‘You okay?’ I said.

‘A grand chamber?’ asked Luan.

‘Fit for a king,’ said Jay. ‘Probably literally.’

Luan groped for his chair, and sat back down. ‘His Majesty’s private quarters.’

I studied him. He’d turned white. ‘Why’s that so shocking?’

‘Because,’ he said faintly, ‘those rooms have been inaccessible since Torvaston died.’ He lunged suddenly, way fast for such an old man, and scooped up the snuff box that Jay had set down on the arm of my chair. ‘This must have belonged to His Majesty,’ he said, and his voice shook. Then he chuckled, though the almost maniacal glint in his eye took all the mirth out of the sound. ‘Not that we have nothing left of his personal possessions, but none of them have ever worked. Because he attuned the charm to… to a snuff box.’

‘And whata snuff box!’ said Jay, producing the damned lyre with a flourish.

All thoughts leaked out of my foolish brain, and time stopped. I stared like an idiot at the pretty thing, its curving frame gleaming like moon-touched silver, its strings rippling like sun-touched waters, and the cursed thing sang to me. The melody reverberated through my bones, and I knew I would remember those notes for the rest of my life.

Magick pulsed around me. I no longer saw Earl Evemer’s handsome, old-fashioned parlour, or not in such prosaic terms as walls and furniture and fireplaces. I saw the world as a flow of magick, colourless yet shimmering with all the colours in the world. Jay was a firework throwing off sparks — my doing, perhaps. Luan blended in, seamlessly, like a single thread in a complex, perfect tapestry.

I do not know how I might have appeared, for I could not see myself. But I felt right. Slotted in like the final piece in a jigsaw puzzle. Powerful.

I do not know what happened between the moment of Jay’s waving the lyre around, and the moment when he hid it behind its glamour once more. I came awake with a start, to find Jay looking unperturbed (good, Earl Evemer had not tried to make off with the lyre), and his lordship seated once again in his deep armchair, looking six ways shaken.

‘I would like very much to see His Majesty’s chambers,’ said Luan.

‘You do have the snuff box,’ I pointed out. He still held it clutched in his left hand.

His fingers opened as I spoke, and he offered it back to us. ‘And I have taken it without your permission.’

‘Do you need our permission?’ I said, uncertain. ‘It more rightly belongs to you than to us.’

But Luan shook his head. ‘I may not know why, but Torvaston had his reasons for leaving these things in your Britain. And he was of your world, not ours. If you are here at the behest of his natural heirs, then I will not lay claim to this box.’

I exchanged a look with Jay. ‘I can’t think of a single reason to object to your using it,’ I said.

‘Neither can I,’ agreed Jay.

Not that I didn’t suffer a moment’s disquiet. Why had Torvaston locked everyone out of his rooms, and left the key in our Britain instead?

But I couldn’t afford to start doubting Luan’s motives now. Apart from anything, I badly wanted to see those rooms, too.

‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘Oh,’ I added casually, ‘And I’d like to stop by that workshop on the way there. I may have, um, left something behind.’

Ten minutes later, I stood with Luan and Jay at a crossroads in the network of passages that ran throughout the tower. These four-way junctions functioned as transport points, Luan informed us, provided you either knew how to manipulate them, or you were carrying something that served as a token.

That didn’t explain how one of them had swept Pup away, but since no one was likely to have any explanation to offer for Goodie’s peculiar brand of larking about, I chose not to raise the issue.

Mauf lay snug in my shoulder bag. Snug and smug. ‘Miss Vesper!’ he had greeted me as I stole into the workshop. ‘I lay my intellectual riches at your exquisite feet.’

I’d stopped, surprised into immobility. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I,’ he said proudly, ‘have been very busy.’

If I didn’t know it to be impossible, I would have said he sounded drunk. Drunk on knowledge? Intoxicated by academia? Mauf had drunk deeply from the Well of Wisdom, and was now high as a kite.

I gave his front cover a soothing pat as I picked him up. ‘Just out of interest, could you actually read any of those texts?’

‘Not a word.’ He giggled.

I gave up.

He now lay asleep (supposedly) in the bottom of the bag. Once in a while I heard something like a stray chortle from somewhere in the vicinity of my right elbow.

Best to ignore it.

‘Forgive me,’ said Luan, paused on the brink of taking the plunge into Torvaston’s Royal Apartments. ‘Is your bag… laughing?’

‘Long story,’ I said.

He just looked at me, and I felt a bit guilty. I had just used Mauf to thieve Hyndorin secrets, even if I hadn’t taken anything of material value. I had no business standing there like butter wouldn’t melt.

Then again, if the snuff box was more rightly our property than his, because our Britain and natural successors and representatives of the Troll Court, yada yada, then surely works related to Torvaston’s projects qualified under the same rule. Right?

Sometimes I envied Jay his utter moral certainty. It did make him a bit of a stick in the mud sometimes, but at least he was spared these exhausting bouts of wrestling with his conscience.

It being rather too late in the day to set about being a goody two-shoes, I abandoned that line of thought.

Luan was hesitating.

‘Everything all right?’ I said, when time passed and he did not move.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is only that… no one here has seen these rooms in hundreds of years. Their very existence has become the province of more myth than fact.’

‘That makes it exciting,’ I offered, bouncing a bit on my toes.

He nodded, and straightened purposefully. I wasn’t fooled. His hands were shaking.

People really revered Torvaston, didn’t they? I hoped he was the kind of person who deserved all this adulation. As far as I could determine, his track record was a bit too varied to merit it.

‘He must have had a really magnetic personality,’ I muttered.

‘Torvaston?’ said Luan. ‘He was like a god.’

With which bombshell, he stepped into the crossroads vortex and vanished, sweeping Jay and I away with him.

‘Hippogriff, I think,’ said Luan calmly, and pointed to Jay’s feet.

Hooves. Dead giveaway.

Jay said something beaky.

‘Oh, dear,’ I sighed.

‘Your associate?’ said Luan.

‘Yes. And I would love to know where he’s been this past hour or so, but I think I’ll have to get him out of here to find out. He was okay outside.’

‘Magickal dissonance,’ said Luan, nodding. ‘It has been harder to maintain a balance since the Heart was lost.’ His eyes narrowed, fixed upon me. ‘How is it that your companion is so much affected, while you are not?’

I had not yet got around to telling him that part of my increasingly complicated story. ‘It all started in Vale,’ I said, trying unsuccessfully to soothe a visibly alarmed Jay.

‘Vale?’ echoed Luan sharply. ‘What were you doing up there?’

‘Looking for this place. Torvaston’s map depicted both the valley of the Vales of Wonder, and the Hyndorin Mountains, and we went to the other one first. It’s… interesting up there.’

Luan gave a faint snort, but did not offer any further comment.

‘Well, and we were all losing our collective… er, marbles in Vale. It’s way too intensely magickal for a feeble crowd from a magickal backwater. We were given these disgusting unicorn potions to drink, and that helped. For a while.’

‘And then what?’ said Luan, when I fell silent.

How to explain the rest?

All in a giant rush, and hope for unusual mental acuity in my auditor. Go.

‘We went to the top of Mount Vale and there’s major griffin and unicorn activity up there by the way, not without a certain amount of forced labour, and we were kind of in trouble and we wanted to release all the shiny beasts. So I took out my mother’s magickal lyre of fabulousness and it sort of adopted me and I came out of that experience soaked in magick up to my eyeballs.’

Luan looked at me in silence.

‘That part has yet to go away,’ I finished. ‘Hence, I am okay in here but Jay is not. Which is rather the reverse of the way things were back in Scarborough, when everyone else was okay and I existed on the point of imminent explosion.’

Luan nodded slowly. ‘It is many years since any of us were in Vale,’ he mused. ‘You have guessed, I suppose, the connection?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t—’ I paused, and thought. Jay had taken a seat beside me, and I realised I was absently stroking his arm. He had soft feathers. I have no idea if it was more soothing to him or to me.

Connections between the enclaves of Hyndorin and Vale. Torvaston had clearly had an interest in the latter, even if he had not chosen it for his headquarters. His scroll-case told us that much. But if he hadn’t settled there, and his successors at Hyndorin never went there anymore, what possible link could there be?

Jay said something, his beak clattering, and gesticulated.

‘How long has there been a settlement in Vale?’ I said. ‘In Torvaston’s day, it appears to have been known as the Vales of Wonder, which is suggestive of an area of natural magickal intensity. We were surprised to find a town, when we went there.’

Jay said something else, and I even caught a word or two. ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Some parts of the town did appear to be very old.’

Luan smiled faintly. ‘Very good. Yes, the settlement there is not so old as this one, but nearly so. It dates from the mid eighteenth century.’

Or, around the same time that the Heart of Hyndorin was destroyed. ‘That is where Torvaston’s disgraced courtiers went,’ I guessed. ‘The ones who opposed him, and were kicked out.’

Luan inclined his head. ‘It has been built according to very different values. I am disappointed to hear that little has improved since those days.’

Jay rolled his eyes, and slumped back into the cushions in an attitude of despair.

I patted his hand. ‘Hippogriffs are noble creatures.’

Whatever Jay said next sounded suspiciously like a curse.

‘I may be able to help,’ said Luan. ‘But first, I would like to hear more about that lyre.’

‘It’s an Yllanfalen artefact. Its primary purpose is to select a king or queen for Ygranyllon, the kingdom of its origin, and it’s been doing that for centuries. Supposedly it was created by one of their early kings, who the Yllanfalen revere almost as some kind of god, and it’s made out of skysilver or moonsilver or some such fancifully-named thing.’ I paused for effect, and added: ‘Or, what His Majesty Torvaston seems to have referred to, slightly less imaginatively, as “magickal silver”.’

That got his lordship’s attention. ‘Magickal silver?’ he repeated, and sat up in his chair. ‘That is— remarkable.’

‘Just like the Heart, am I right?’

His expression became guarded. ‘I cannot say.’

‘I get it. You can neither confirm nor deny.’ I held up the compass. ‘And am I much mistaken in thinking this thing has a few moonsilver parts to it, too?’

Luan’s lips twitched. ‘I cannot say.’

‘Mm.’

Jay held out the snuff-box, in the palm of one clawed hand. ‘That, too?’ I said, looking at him.

He nodded furiously. I gathered that his possession of the box had taken him somewhere quite interesting indeed. We really needed to get that beak off his face.

‘The key, too,’ I said. ‘So it appears that this substance, by whatever name it is known, is capable of serious business when it comes to magick.’

‘Because of which, it is almost impossible to find any longer,’ said Luan. ‘There was a seam of it in the environs of Vale, long ago, which is perhaps a partial explanation of Torvaston’s interest in it. Most likely that particular source was exhausted before the town was settled.’

‘Are there any more known?’

‘Not at this time. Nor is it possible, any longer, to acquire unworked examples of the metal. Therefore,’ and he looked seriously at me, ‘I need hardly tell you how incredibly valuable is that lyre. Its properties do not surprise me, if it is made entirely from magickal silver. There are people who would kill you in a heartbeat for possession of so much of it.’

I thanked my lucky stars for my odd obsession with the lyre. If it were not for that, Jay would not have had reason to hide it, and we might have been waltzing all over the fifth Britain carrying more magickal goodness than our collective lives were worth.

‘Question,’ I said. ‘Have you heard before of the silver’s having a… mesmerising effect, on some people?

‘Is this what you meant when you referred to its having “adopted” you?’ asked Luan.

‘Sort of. That didn’t happen until I picked it up and played it. Before that, I had trouble resisting the temptation to do so. I practically had to be restrained.’

‘Hmm.’ Luan looked me over thoughtfully. ‘Would it interest you to know that His Majesty was said to have a similar fascination with the stuff?’

‘Why yes, it would.’

‘History does not say why, however. I am unsure whether the reason for it was ever known.’

‘Curse it.’

‘Does it bother you so very much?’

‘It didn’t, until I played the thing. Now I am too explosively magickal to go home, and that bothers me quite a lot.’ I did not add that I felt condemned to Torvaston’s own fate. Exiled from my own Britain, and obliged to stay forever in a place like Hyndorin or Vale. I mean, it was a perfectly lovely tower, but nothing to compare to the familiar comforts and chaos of Home.

A swift stab of intense homesickness took me aback, and I paused to swallow it down.

‘Magickal silver is sought after for more than one reason,’ said Luan. ‘Partly for its propensity to absorb magickal energy. It is only a personal theory, but I believe that may have been the original source for His Majesty’s ideas.’

‘Yes!’ I said. ‘That makes sense. Perhaps he thought it could be used to absorb the excess at old Farringale, and… undrown it.’

‘Perhaps so,’ Luan allowed. ‘But it also, as you have discovered, has the capacity to expend energy in interesting ways — specifically, without much depleting stored magicks. In other words, it absorbs and also generates, in a cycle reminiscent of the behaviour of nesting griffins.’

I nodded. This coincided, more or less, with our own ideas. ‘And Torvaston himself?’ I guessed.

Luan eyed me. ‘I may be wrong, but your condition could prove confirmation of an idea I have long toyed with.’

‘Torvaston was a kind of human griffin,’ I said. ‘His personal papers suggest as much.’

‘Yes. And he may have become so in the same way that you have. Through close contact with, and manipulation of, a charged source of magickal silver.’

That agreed with everything Alban had told us. ‘Was he… ever known to have, um, stopped being a human griffin?’

‘No.’

Damnit. I really was stuck forever.

‘The lyre, perhaps, may prove both curse and cure,’ suggested Luan. ‘But in the meantime, let us tend to your unfortunate colleague.’ He stood up — but then his eyes flicked to me, and he said, ‘Or perhaps you may do so.’

‘Me?’ I echoed dumbly.

‘Imbalance is the problem. Your friend — you called him Jay? — is out of his magickal depth, here, and is therefore vulnerable to interference.’

‘Magickal shot straight to the heart?’ I suggested.

Luan blinked, nonplussed. ‘If you were to share some what you call your excess magick with your colleague, it may stabilise him.’

I liked this idea much better than chugging unicorn organs. ‘But will it make him like me?’ I asked, struck with sudden alarm. Jay might have talked of staying in the fifth Britain forever, but absolutely had not been serious. I didn’t want to condemn him to share my exile.

‘Were the effects of those “potions” you spoke of permanent?’ said Luan, with an amused smile.

‘Strictly temporary.’

‘Then I believe you may proceed with confidence.’

All well and good, but how exactly did one go about magickally supercharging one’s friends? ‘No offence, Jay, but I’m not giving up a kidney for this.’

He gave me a flat, hard look. It probably said, if you imagine I’m drinking any potion made from your internal organs, you’re a madwoman.

Good that we were on the same page.

I thought back a few hours, to our madcap journey up to Hyndorin. Jay had hauled me through the Ways via physical contact, in spite of the fact that touching me produced clear signs of magickal disorder.

But that was outside, where Jay was comfortable and I was not. I’d messed him up because proximity to me had thrown his magickal balance out of whack.

Maybe I was overthinking this. Maybe, in here, all I needed to do was touch him, and I’d throw his magickal balance into whack. Or something.

‘Righto, Jay,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing else for it. It’s hug time.’ I held out my arms, smiling beatifically.

I received a look of narrow-eyed suspicion in return.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘Do you want to spend eternity as a hippogriff or not?’

Damn him, he actually thought it over.

Then he swept me up in a bone-creaking hug, the kind which lifted me a couple of inches off the floor.

‘Whoa,’ I said. ‘Having a beak isn’t that bad.’

Apparently it was, for he did not release me until I’d passed out from lack of oxygen.

Okay, no. He didn’t release me until the feathers were on the retreat and the beak was gone and those weird incorporeal wings had faded into the aether.

Then he dropped me. ‘Finally,’ he said, and I smiled into his reassuringly normal Jay-face once more.

He did not smile back. ‘Ves, do you have any idea what that hound of yours has gone and done?’

I stopped smiling. ‘Pup? No, why? Is she okay?’

‘Oh, she’s fine.’ He began, oddly, to laugh. Mild hysteria. ‘She’s done what she usually does, and scuttled her wriggly little way to a stash of treasure.’

‘That doesn’t sound too bad,’ I said cautiously.

‘I’ll give you a hint. It’s silver, and there’s quite a bit of it.’

‘What— wait, how did she not get ported outside? I thought you said—’ I looked at Luan, and was struck by the gobsmacked look on his face. ‘Not relevant. Lord Evemer? Are you all right?’

He visibly swallowed, and said in a constrained voice: ‘Did you say silver?’

So much for my brilliant theory. Torvaston came here to perfect his magick-regulating device, I’d thought, so that he could someday go home and repair the damage he had helped to cause at Farringale. True, I had come up with no ideas as to why he never had gone back — except that the device, perhaps, never worked.

To hear that he had actively chosen not to go back, and indeed to hide the thing from everyone who might come looking for him… well, that changed things.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

The elderly troll straightened. ‘If I tell you that your purpose in coming here cannot be fulfilled, and Torvaston’s work will never be released to you. Do you, then, still wish to ask questions of me?’

‘Of course,’ I said, frowning.

He nodded once, and held out his hand, Torvaston’s compass still tucked into his palm. As I took it, he tightened his fingers briefly around mine, before releasing me. I hoped it was a gesture of goodwill. His scrutiny of me appeared, now, more curious than suspicious. ‘The sixth Britain,’ he mused. ‘But Torvaston always said that magick would decline there, and you— do not appear to bear out that theory.’

Not bristling with magick as I was, no. I stood there as his (temporary) equal, a natural part of all that lovely magickal flow. ‘It’s complicated,’ I said.

His lips curved in a faint smile. ‘I am the seventeenth Earl Evemer,’ he said. ‘But you may call me Luan.’

I made him my best Milady-curtsey, which prompted another smile. Then I ruined it by saying, ‘Call me Ves.’

Quarter of an hour later, I sat in a quiet parlour some floors below with Earl Evemer, being plied with good things. Always my favourite part of any mission.

‘You are not, then, here alone?’ I enquired, somewhere in the midst of my third scone.

‘Oh, no. We are not so numerous as once we were, of course, but twenty-one wardens remain, along with our families.’

‘Wardens?’

‘Our lineages were tasked with the care and protection of the tower and its contents, before His Majesty died. Some few of us have died out in the intervening centuries, but enough remain.’

Seventy or eighty people, perhaps, in a building the size of a small town. No wonder it felt deserted, or some parts of it did. Here on the lower floors, I’d seen signs enough of habitation, though we had not yet encountered anyone else.

‘You never bring in anyone from outside?’

‘Outside?’ he echoed, aghast. ‘Never.’

I thought about everything I had seen beyond this serene enclave forgotten by time, and couldn’t wonder at it. Twenty-one wardens and their families could never be enough to protect the tower from the likes of Wyr, and his trade-partners of Vale. Hungry for profit, morally moribund, and devoid of respect for either history or consequence, they’d decimate the place.

But, how isolated an existence. And the ultimate fate of everyone who lived here must be a final and irrevocable decline.

I was growing tired of that general theme.

Earl Evemer — Luan — munched his way slowly through a sweet roll, his gaze fixed somewhere on the middle distance. I didn’t rush him. Having just given him the speedy low-down on everything that had led me to his tower, my next duty was to leave him a moment to think it over.

And devour a couple more delicacies in the process. Gods, but I was hungry.

By the time he again spoke, I was happily replete and dozing off in my dangerously comfortable armchair. A fire burned in the grate, around which we and our tea-table were arranged. Watching the flames, I’d been close to gliding off to sleep.

‘One or two points do not perfectly make sense,’ said Luan at length, startling me awake.

I sat up quickly, trying to look alert. ‘Mm,’ I said intelligently. ‘Um. Yes.’ I tapped the compass on the arm of my chair.

‘Yes,’ said Luan. ‘That is the salient point.’

‘You don’t know how this came to be at Farringale?’

‘I did not know that any had been left there.’

‘Plus the key to the door, tucked inside a scroll-case. And on the inside of that case was a map of the mountains within which this enclave is hidden. Either Torvaston himself returned once to Farringale and left these things there, or he sent someone else to do it. So, if he did not want his work to be unearthed by his descendants, why did he leave us the means to follow him?’

Luan stared at the compass. ‘I cannot answer that. But, Ves, you should know…’

I waited, but he did not finish the sentence. ‘What should I know?’ I prompted.

He looked at me, and I read unease and something like guilt in his eyes. ‘His Majesty’s… project,’ he said.

‘The, er, regulator?’

‘If you would like to call it that, yes. It… well, it no longer exists.’

I almost dropped my tea cup. ‘Tell me I heard that wrong.’

Luan shook his head. ‘The records state that His Majesty came to regret the project,’ he said, and fell silent again.

Much as I could sympathise with his predicament, I did not really have a lot of time to waste while he wrestled with himself. ‘Because it never worked?’ I prompted.

He blinked. ‘Oh, no. It wasn’t that it did not work.’

I reminded myself to breathe. ‘You mean… do you mean that it did work, or the fact that it didn’t was not the source of Torvaston’s regret?’

‘It worked,’ he said. ‘This enclave was built partly with the assistance of— it is referred to as the Heart of Hyndorin. Because, we must conclude, that is precisely what it was. Coming as you do from a diminished Britain, you might not suppose that this place is a pale shadow of its former glory. Yet, it is much faded, because the Heart is gone.’

I stared. ‘The thing worked! Giddy gods, this changes everything.’

‘Yes,’ said Luan heavily. ‘It did, change everything. It was too much of a success, you see. It was His Majesty’s greatest pride, and as you have surmised, he did hope to return to Farringale with it, and reverse that enclave’s destruction.

‘But, others among his courtiers had different ideas. Where there is powerful magick, there will always be— avarice, and ambition. In this instance, there was not only powerful magick but the means to generate more and more of it. You may imagine, I suppose, what that represented to some of the members of His Majesty’s Court.’

I could not suppress a sigh. What a tired old story. ‘And this is why we can’t have nice things,’ I said.

Luan blinked at me, and I reminded himself that he came from a society worlds away from mine. ‘The Court divided into two factions,’ he said. ‘Torvaston’s closest allies, and those who came to oppose his ideas. The Heart became a dangerous bone of contention between them, and— matters soon grew out of hand. Much damage was done. His Majesty came to doubt his own plans, in the wake of this disaster, and wondered whether the very descendants upon whom he had expected to bestow his work might not prove unworthy of it. Placed into the wrong hands, it would do far more harm to your Britain than good. And he had been in such a position before.’

Of course, he had. He was the king whose efforts to save his kingdom had ultimately hastened its demise. He would be the last person to sail blindly into another such mistake. My heart ached at the tragedy of it, and the waste. I’d fairly castigated Wyr and his ilk for insufficient interest in the consequences of their actions; had the opposite attitude led Torvaston to destroy his irreplaceable work?

‘The Heart was destroyed in 1741,’ said Luan. ‘At the very end of Torvaston’s life. It broke his heart to do it, so they say, for he did not long survive its destruction. Those whose actions had led to his decision were expelled forever from Hyndorin. Those who remained were appointed tower wardens, to guard what was left for as long as we could.’

‘Against the return of Torvaston’s enemies?’ I guessed.

‘Yes. And everyone else.’

‘Has no one else ever got in? Ever?’

Luan shifted in his chair. ‘Once in a great while. We are not quite self-sufficient here; occasionally it is necessary for some of us to leave, to procure necessities, or to conduct research. Carelessness or ill luck are inevitable in time, of course, and it has sometimes happened that someone has followed one of us back inside.’

‘And… what came of that?’

‘We dealt with it,’ he said, in a harder voice. ‘And took greater care in future. It hasn’t happened in a long time.’

I wanted to ask how they had dealt with it, exactly. No reports of successful infiltration of this Enclave had made it beyond the walls, apparently. But Luan was looking, grimly and with some sadness, at an unusual standard lamp in one corner. I’d noticed it before, for it was oddly twisted in shape, and its green silk shade tilted, almost like a bowed head.

I thought of what I had done to Wyr, and decided I did not need to know the details.

‘So you see,’ said Luan, returning his attention to me. ‘I cannot help you fulfil your mission, for it is beyond my power.’

‘Even if it was ultimately Torvaston’s wish?’ I said. ‘Maybe he thought differently, before he died. Maybe he had a little faith in us after all.’

‘Even if he did, the Heart is gone forever. There is nothing for you to take back to his successors.’

I saw that he did not much regret having to give me such a negative for an answer. Despite the evidence of the scroll-case and the compass and the key, as far as he was concerned, his ancestral king had decided the Heart was not to be entrusted to anyone ever again. He and his ancestors had dedicated their lives to protecting what was left of Torvaston’s legacy. They were used to doing as he was thought to have wanted.

Also, in fairness, even the compass and scroll-case did not absolutely mean that Torvaston had changed his mind. It could have been someone else who’d taken them to Farringale, after his death. It wasn’t a likely explanation, but nor was it impossible.

‘I understand,’ I said graciously, even as my mind was busy working on a way around the problem.

An idea occurred to me, and I sat up. ‘Luan,’ I said. ‘One question.’

‘Yes?’

‘I suppose there isn’t any chance that Torvaston lied?’

‘Lied?’ he repeated, with strong disapproval.

‘About destroying the Heart. You don’t suppose he might have made everyone believe that he’d wrecked it, while he’d actually hidden it instead?’

‘No,’ said Luan, crushing my hopes. ‘Its destruction was witnessed by his most loyal courtiers. The materials that went into making it were redistributed, and crafted into other artefacts, many of which are still here. There can be no doubt that the Heart is gone.’

I sagged back in my chair again, disappointed.

But. The Heart itself might be gone, but someone had built the thing in the first place, and someone had possibly kept records of the process. And guess who had a friend in the library/workshop upstairs, cheerfully soaking up every word the trolls of Hyndorin had written?

‘I do believe we are about to have company,’ said Luan, his eyes going faraway. ‘Someone of your acquaintance, I hope.’

In other words, someone unfamiliar to him. I had only an instant to think of Jay before the door swung open, and someone charged into the room, stopping just short of colliding with Luan’s chair.

The newcomer was about Jay’s height and had his colouring, but otherwise the resemblances were few. This man was sprouting feathers, and a pair of incorporeal wings hovered behind him. His long fingers curled under like claws, and they were tipped with talons.

I did not want to look too closely at his face, because I was fairly sure he had more beak than mouth and good heavens.

He was wearing a familiar jacket.

‘Jay,’ I said. ‘I don’t wish to alarm you, but you appear to be turning into a griffin.’

Whatever swept me away in Torvaston’s tower felt like a species of Waymastery, though I had never before heard of the kind that operated on an involuntary target. Or that could achieve the process so smoothly. Not to disparage Jay’s skill; he does remarkable things with the pale, faded stuff we call “magick” in our Britain. But this was something else. Even the henge complexes weren’t quite so seamless.

‘Jay,’ I began, once reality solidified around me and I’d stopped moving. ‘How do you think this works? I mean, even the complexes require some kind of token, though maybe that’s more to do with tax revenue than—’ I stopped, because I abruptly realised I was alone. Neither Jay nor Goodie were anywhere in evidence.

I steadied myself, and took a long look around. I had been dropped in the middle of a room the size of a hay barn. Oceans of space opened up around me. I couldn’t immediately decide what the chamber was for. Bookcases were in evidence, running from floor to ceiling, which suggested a library, except that there were nowhere near enough of them. One wall featured a row of high tables which reminded me of those in Orlando’s workshop, but their surfaces were bare. The far end of the room sported enormous armchairs upholstered in silk, elegant little tables, and plush rugs strewn about the plain oak-boarded floor. At the other end, great crystal cabinets rose some eight or ten feet high, their doors shut, and a complicated chandelier hung from the ceiling, its lights composed of jewels in the same shades as Torvaston’s compass.

Not a sound disturbed the dense silence. It was the same stillness we had experienced in old Farringale, the kind resulting from a profound absence of life.

Like Farringale, it showed no other signs of long abandonment. Shafts of sunlight shone through the long windows, illuminating clear, dust-free air. No cobwebs drifted down from the ceiling. The luxurious upholstery of those grand armchairs was untouched by time, and the carpets were pristine.

Hardly surprising, I supposed. The enchantments that lingered at old Farringale must have been the work of Torvaston’s court; of course they would have brought those magicks with them.

I felt a moment’s unease, though, at all these parallels. What else did Torvaston’s tower have in common with old Farringale? Why was this place abandoned, and so-long sealed to the outside world? I thought of Alban and Emellana outside, and fervently hoped that the same fate as Farringale had not befallen this place. If the rocky promontory upon which this tower was built was infested with ortherex, they were in danger.

Probably it was lucky they had been obliged to stay outside.

‘Stop gawking, Ves,’ I murmured, and forced my feet to move. I could worry later about my companions, and time would soon tell where Jay and Goodie had ended up. Investigation beckoned, and I’d better get on with it.

Being me, I went first to the nearest bookcase. A perfunctory perusal revealed a slew of texts, mostly hand-written. None of them in any language I could read.

‘Mauf,’ I said, retrieving him. ‘If you’d be so kind? The scholars of Mandridore don’t have nearly enough to do already.’

‘Madam, I would be delighted,’ said Mauf, as I placed him on a low shelf.

I could swear I heard him giggle.

‘Good stuff?’ I said.

‘Delicious,’ he purred.

What might rank as delicious in Mauf’s odd little world, I judged it best not to enquire into. ‘Have fun,’ I told him. ‘But if you can make it quite quick, that would be great. We are, as ever, pressed for time.’

Mauf rustled his pages in a sigh. ‘Great work cannot be rushed, Miss Vesper.’

‘Nonetheless, you always manage it somehow. Thanks, Mauf.’

He did not reply. I hoped it was because he was absorbed in the task of soaking up knowledge, not because he was offended with me.

Then I wondered how it had come about that I worried over the tender feelings of a book. And considered this normal, to boot.

‘Life doesn’t get any simpler, does it?’ I said to the empty air as I wandered off to look at the cabinets. They were locked, of course, every one, and I could see nothing of their contents through the frosted glass doors.

Nothing else of any interest beckoned, and I stopped, nonplussed. The place had the look of a workroom about it, excepting perhaps the plush luxury of the armchair nook. But if it was Torvaston’s old inventing room, standing in it wasn’t helping me much. Whatever he and his colleagues might once have worked on was long gone. Or well hidden.

I went to a window, and glanced out. I was much higher up the tower, the view told me that much. But how close I was to the tower-top rooms, I could not tell.

‘Mauf,’ I said. ‘Time to explore. How are you getting along?’

‘I will need at least an hour,’ Mauf told me coolly.

‘We don’t have an hour. Can you prioritise?’

‘Which ones would you like me to prioritise?’

‘The… most interesting ones?’

‘Please elaborate on how you are defining the word “interesting” in this context.’

‘Um. The most important? No, don’t say it. I don’t know. Carry on.’

The silence that followed was broken by the sound of approaching footsteps, and I felt a surge of relief. ‘Jay,’ I said as the door opened. ‘Where did you get to— oh!’ Halfway to the door, I stopped dead, for the person coming through it was not Jay.

Nor was he human.

‘Sorry,’ I said numbly, paralysed with shock. Two minutes ago I had been certain that the tower was deserted; the absolute lack of signs of life, together with the deep silence, had equally proclaimed it. As had Wyr’s assertion that nobody had got inside in centuries.

But here was a living person, a troll, clad in the fashions of eighty or so years ago but very much alive. Elderly, judging from his white hair and stooped posture, though his face was largely unlined. He stared back at me with a shock to mirror my own, and stammered something I could not understand.

‘Apologies,’ I said, moving forward again. ‘I would not have barged in had I known I was intruding on somebody’s home — though to be quite truthful, I did not perfectly intend to be up here at all. I’m Cordelia Vesper, a… scholar.’ I held out my hand.

He did not immediately take it, nor did he speak again. I found myself scrutinised by a pair of lively, but wary, grey eyes, with a shrewdness to his glance that made me most uncomfortable.

‘I must say,’ he said at last. ‘Treasure-hunters have changed a great deal in recent years.’ He spoke lightly accented English, with a hesitation that suggested he did not often use the language.

‘I’m not a treasure hunter,’ I said firmly, choosing not to mention that I had brought one such to his doorstep. Even if I had also turned him into a charmingly unthreatening tree.

I was awarded a handshake at last, though a tentative one. ‘And yet,’ he said, ‘you have contrived to find your way straight into the workshops.’

‘Not entirely by choice. I was on the ground floor, and then somehow whisked up here—’

‘Oh?’ he interrupted, and looked at me afresh. Was it my imagination, or had the suspicion increased? ‘And how came that about?’

‘I do not know, sir. I wish I did.’ I hesitated, on the point of telling him about Jay and Pup. Should I?

Yes. Something told me that to err on the side of honesty might be wise.

‘I came here with an associate,’ I said. ‘And a… dog.’ Curse it, if he found out that the dog in question was a treasure-sniffing nose-for-gold, he would never believe that I wasn’t a thief. ‘I do not know whereabouts they have ended up.’

‘Outside, most likely,’ he said, with a trace of amusement. ‘That is where intruders are usually sent.’

Oh. Then I was on my own in here.

‘The question remains,’ he said, looking keenly at me. ‘How is it that you were not? And indeed, how came you to pass the wards at all?’

If by “wards” he meant the spectacular illusions which disguised the tower as an impregnable mountain, I was dying to ask him all about that.

But courtesies first.

‘Regarding the second question,’ I said, ‘I have this.’ I showed him the compass. ‘I have three other associates outside. We took down the wards between us. Though we did not expect to encounter… occupants.’

Why hadn’t they? Because the enclave had been founded hundreds of years ago. Because according to Wyr, the door hadn’t opened in living memory; no one had got in, and presumably no one had been known to come out either. Because I was used to the echoing decay of lost civilisations, in particular Farringale, and to imagine that someone might still be living in this one had seemed unthinkable.

My unexpected interlocutor had gone very quiet. He held out his hand for Torvaston’s compass, and with only a slight hesitation, I gave it over to him. It lay in his palm, untouched, and he gazed at it as though he beheld a miracle.

Slowly, carefully, he stroked a thumb over its surface.

‘Well, now,’ he said softly. ‘And I never thought to see its like again.’

It struck me that my possession of the compass might prove to be the answer to both of his questions. If the henge complexes operated based on something in the traveller’s possession, might not the tower’s Waymastered enchantments also respond to something I held? If I hadn’t had the compass with me, I might well have ended up booted outside.

Which led my thoughts back to the topic of Jay. He’d had the snuff box with him. So, then. Was he outside, or somewhere else in the tower?

My new troll friend (hopefully) looked up. ‘I think you had better tell me how you came by this,’ he said, and a hint of steel had crept into his tone. ‘Was this stolen?’

Tricky question. ‘It— well— no, although also yes. It’s complicated—’

His eyes narrowed, and I stopped gabbling and held up my hands.

‘I work for the Troll Court at Mandridore, on the sixth Britain,’ I said hastily. ‘We’re here at their instigation. We took that— object— from old Farringale-that-was, withTheir Majesties’ permission, so in that sense it isn’t stolen. And somewhere in the valley out there is Prince Alban, next heir to the troll throne.’

All of this came out in a rush, and was met with silence.

Then: ‘And what is your aim, in infiltrating this tower?’

I swallowed. ‘We— perhaps ought to have a longer conversation about all this.’

I expected more of the inquisition, perhaps greater hostility. To my surprise, instead, he gave a mournful sigh, his fingers closing slightly around the compass. ‘We knew it would come,’ he said, so quietly I wondered whether he was talking to me at all. ‘Well, and it has come.’

‘May I… ask what you mean?’ I said.

‘His Majesty’s kin,’ he said. ‘We hoped you would not find us. And at such a distance of years, it seemed unlikely that any of you now would.’

‘But… why?’

‘Because you would doubtless come looking for his work, and… it was not his wish that you should ever find it.’

I stared in disbelief at the stupendous tower looming out of the misty remnants of what had appeared to be an impregnable mountain. Absolutely had been, in fact; had I not stood upon it myself, not long ago? Had there not been a door set into its side? My mind reeled at the power and complexity of such an illusion. What had Torvaston wrought, out in the wilds of this wondrously magickal Britain?

And damn me if the entire thing wasn’t built out of starstone, to boot. Like Melmidoc’s spire. I couldn’t be sure until twilight, of course, when it would most probably develop that distinctive blue glimmer. But the way the white stone shone pearly in the sun looked awfully familiar.

‘Go,’ Miranda said, shoving the compass into my hands.

I hesitated, looking at Pup, who was questing in circles around my feet. ‘Will you look after—’

‘Take her with you,’ Miranda said. ‘Never know what she’ll find.’

How true that had repeatedly proved. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Follow when you can.’

I took off running, Jay pounding along at my heels. The tower was built upon a rocky promontory of considerable height; as we drew nearer, I saw that the stone “lift” was still there, still poised to ferry visitors up to the door some sixty feet above ground level. The structure was of an architectural style I had never before seen, and it’s hard to coherently describe. The doors and windows were narrow and tall, with pointed arches; a little gothic, but bigger, archier, airier, and curlicued. The conical roof crowning the tower spread unusually wide, and ought to have been top heavy, but the effect was somehow graceful. As for the body of the tower, it had the look of a building that had once had straight walls — until someone impossibly large had taken hold of the top, and twisted it into an elegant spiral.

‘I’d have thought it would resemble Farringale,’ I said to Jay as we approached the lift, both our necks craning to keep the impossible tower in view.

‘It resembles nothing I’ve ever seen,’ he said, awed.

I gazed up and up as the lift carried us skywards. Far above, the griffins wheeled and turned around the pinnacle of the tower, just as though it were a mountain still. I braced myself as we neared the door, in case any of them should object to our approach. But they drifted on, serene and oblivious.

The Wyr-tree still stood at the top. I felt a moment’s dismay upon beholding it, for though Wyr’s continued disablement was mighty convenient, I began to wonder how long he would remain in the shape of a tree. The past day or so, it was like I’d been handed the keys to a formula one Ferrari when I was used to a twenty-miles-per-hour moped. I had no idea what I was doing with these deep, strange magicks, and it was quite possible I had condemned Wyr to eternity as a tree.

Annoying he might be, but he didn’t deserve what was effectively death.

‘Leave it,’ said Jay, noticing the direction of my gaze. ‘If it’s a problem, we can work on it later.’

 ‘Right. Fair.’ We faced the tall, slender doors of the impossible tower. My heart hammered in my chest, and for a moment I could barely breathe. We’d made it. Torvaston’s greatest work stood before us, and somewhere inside was the artefact that might save Farringale. And the rest of British magick into the bargain.

‘Ready?’ said Jay.

‘No, and neither are you. But we’re going anyway.’

When we advanced upon the doors, they opened themselves and swung slowly inwards upon noiseless hinges.

Magick pulsed through the floor in waves, making me shiver. I wrapped my arms around myself and strode onwards, undaunted. ‘Strong stuff here,’ I said to Jay. ‘You’re going to have some trouble.’

‘I can take it,’ said Jay grimly, and I reflected that he’d looked cute with horns.

If he had survived Vale, he could cope with Torvaston’s tower. And if not, I’d just have to be brilliant in some unguessable way, and fix him.

No problem.

Jay and I fell silent as we went through the doors, too awed — and too wary — to speak. Beyond lay a huge hall, its walls hung with long tapestries depicting some kind of courtly scene. Troll figures, of course, and royalty, judging from the jewels and the crowns.

‘Farringale,’ Jay said. ‘I recognise that one.’

He pointed, and I saw at once what he meant. A troll lady wearing a seventeenth-century silken gown and decked in jewels stood before a backdrop I knew at once for the great library at old Farringale.

‘That one,’ I said, nudging Jay. On the opposite wall, a proud-looking troll king posed in a throne room. I’d seen that crown before. ‘Torvaston himself?’ I suggested.

‘I don’t know why I don’t have twenty-foot-tall portraits of myself in my hallway,’ said Jay.

‘Opportunity missed,’ I agreed.

‘There’s still time.’

Pup did a speedy circuit of the hall, nose to the ground, tail wagging. I watched her in case she picked up any interesting scents, but she did not appear interested in anything much; she returned to me, and sat grinning. ‘Pup,’ I said. ‘Find the thing.’

‘Try being a bit less specific, if you can,’ said Jay. ‘You’re not being quite confusing enough.’

‘The thing,’ I said. ‘The magickal silver thing, the— oh, curse it. What do you suppose Torvaston called it?’

‘The Work in Progress,’ said Jay.

‘The Saviour of Enclaves and Britains,’ I said. ‘Find the Saviour, Goodie.’

She sat, tongue lolling, and panted.

‘We’re on our own.’

Jay’s smile faded as he looked around the echoing hall, and took in the number of doors leading off into parts unknown. ‘Much as I would love to explore every inch of this place, it would take us about three weeks.’

‘Which we don’t have,’ I said, watching him carefully for signs of magickal disorder. ‘You’ll be scrambled egg inside of twenty-four hours.’

‘There is that. Also, Ancestria Magicka apparently knows about this valley, thanks to Wyr. They’re bound to show up eventually.’

A point I had forgotten, in all the turmoil. Where were they? The last I’d heard, Fenella Beaumont — and an unspecified number of her associates — had been banished from this Britain by an irate Melmidoc, and sent to… one of the others. Had they managed to return?

If they had, where were they?

If they hadn’t… how long would it be before they did?

‘We need to be long gone before they show up,’ I said.

‘You think?’

‘Right. Where in this town-sized tower might Torvaston hide his priceless life’s work?’

 ‘Judging from the look of this hall, the tower had some ceremonial function; it wasn’t just a workshop,’ said Jay. ‘So not in any of the central areas, most like.’

‘Nowhere ornate, and dripping in gold.’ That would disappoint Goodie. ‘Cellar, or attic?’ I suggested, thinking of Home, and particularly of Orlando. There was something of a precedent for hiding the crazy stuff in one or the other of those two.

Jay pointed up. ‘Griffins,’ he said succinctly.

‘Yes. Where better to develop, and test, a griffin-substitute than in the middle of a gigantic griffin nest?’

Jay sighed, and squared his shoulders. ‘Why do so many of our missions come down to invading griffin lairs and praying we don’t get eaten?’

‘That’s actually quite new,’ I said. ‘Terrible timing on your part.’

‘No griffins on past missions?’

‘Not too many, no. Ogres and unicorns and alikats, though. Some of them rabid.’

‘Yours is an interesting job.’

‘Our job, Jay.’ I set off towards the nearest door, Pup trotting along beside me. ‘Stairs. Help me.’

‘Stairs, or an elevator, like outside?’ said Jay. ‘Why bother climbing when you can have magickal uplift?’

‘What’s the betting the roof can only be accessed by a secret lift at the top of a secret lift at the top of a secret lift?’

‘See, that’s what I like so much about you,’ said Jay, checking and dismissing a few more doors. ‘Your relentless optimism.’

‘What can I say, years of practice… oh, here we are.’ A long corridor lay beyond one of the doors, at the end of which loomed the kind of alcove that had way up written in some indefinable way all over it. Exquisite, of course, but it had the look of an elevator shaft about it. Straight-sided, symmetrical, blank. Stone floor.

I started down it. Pup, developing one of her random fits of enthusiasm, broke into a run and barrelled on ahead of me.

And vanished in a puff of mist, halfway down the passage.

I stopped dead in shock. ‘Goodie?’ I called.

Nothing moved.

‘Where’s she gone?’ said Jay, catching up with me.

‘I… don’t know. She vanished.’ I advanced slowly upon the innocent-seeming spot on the floor that had whisked Goodie away, and stood just shy of it. I couldn’t see anything that might explain where she had gone, or how. The floor was smooth, pale starstone, like everything else.

Jay shrugged. ‘Only one way to find out.’

‘What way is that?’ I said, hoping he had some sliver of esoteric knowledge I’d missed. After all, he was our resident expert on unusual and spectacular modes of magickal travel.

‘Channel our inner Ves,’ he said. ‘And hope for the best.’ With which words, he took a step forward, and planted his feet squarely upon the mischievous stretch of floor.

‘Jay—’ I said, reaching for him.

My hand closed upon empty air.

I rolled my eyes skywards. ‘What,’ I said under my breath, ‘have I done?’ I’ve created a monster.

Or an evil twin.

Ah, well.

I took a step forward of my own, braced for impact.

There wasn’t one. I wafted away on a wisp of mist, lighter than air, and disappeared into the depths of Torvaston’s tower.

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

‘Hi!’ I said after a moment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No, that would be silly,’ I agreed.

‘That would be silly?’ Jay yelped.

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

‘Noted,’ said Jay.

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

I was hungry again!

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

Damnit. Poor timing.

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

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

‘Perhaps we’d better get on, then?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I looked at Emellana. ‘Any ideas?’

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

I sighed. ‘Anybody?’

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

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

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

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

I counted. Nine, not twelve.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No clue.’

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

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

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

‘Right.’

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

‘Ves,’ said Emellana.

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

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

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

Almost imperceptibly, one of the three silver hands moved.

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

‘With three hands?’ said Alban.

‘Whatever it is attracted to is perhaps complicated.’

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

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

Ten minutes later, we made another discovery.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Em,’ I said in awe. ‘You’re purple.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Blue.’

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

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

‘Precisely.’

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

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

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

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

‘… good point.’

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

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

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

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

‘The light?’

Alban nodded once.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘We’ll be—’ I said.

‘Ves.’ Jay hit my arm, and pointed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stranger things were happening out here.

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

‘Pup!’ I wailed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘With?’

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

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

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

Right.

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

Is it important enough?

Yes.

Are you brave enough?

Hell, yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dignity intact.

Sort of.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Not yet,’ he said, eyeing me warily.

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

Pup watched the Wand’s progress with greedy avarice.

I knew how she felt.

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

I left Wyr gazing after me, nonplussed.

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

‘Impressive,’ said she, unruffled as ever.

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

Nobody answered me.

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

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

‘Me too,’ said Alban.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not the time to get distracted, Ves.

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

Jay gave me a shocked look.

‘Er, not fatally,’ I clarified.

‘Right.’

‘Probably.’

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

To be fair, I might have.

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

‘Thank you,’ I murmured.

He briefly squeezed my hand, and released it.

My heart eased a little.

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

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