free fantasy web serial

Some unknowable time later, I was dozing by the lily-pool when an unusual scent caught my nostrils.

I lifted my head, so fast as to crack my crown against the low-hanging branches above me. I snorted in annoyance.

Addie pretended she hadn’t noticed, but I could tell by her studiedly serene posture that she had. And she was laughing at me.

‘Addie!’ I hissed. ‘Do you smell that?’

She lifted her nose, and inhaled.

Then she bolted up right, and shot away from the pool at a full gallop.

I followed at a (slightly) more sedate pace, laughing.

I caught up with her at the mouth of our perfect little glade. She had her rump turned to me, her tail swishing, nose-down in a bag of chips. I poked my nose over her shoulder to have a look. They were the fat-cut kind, her favourite. Crispy on the outside, pillowy in the middle, and translucent with grease.

The bag was held by Jay.

‘Okay, this one’s Adeline,’ he called, and I saw somebody else behind him. Somebody tall, and broad-shouldered, with green-tinted skin, emerald-bright eyes, and bronzed, artfully-windswept hair.

My nose informed me that he, too, had brought an offering.

I swarmed past Addie and almost knocked the Baron over in my enthusiasm. Whether it was his presence that awoke such feelings, or the enormous plate he carried in his hands, I couldn’t have said. I mean, that sounds bad, but he’d brought pancakes. Not just any pancakes, either, but troll-sized pancakes; the kind we’d eaten that day at breakfast, when he had taken me out on what turned out to not be a date.

Well, at least the pancakes had been good. Seriously good. And these were the same: dripping in syrup, laden with ice cream, and tooth-achingly sweet.

I was halfway down the plate before it occurred to me to wonder what they were doing in our Glade, or how they had found it.

‘So we’ve found Ves,’ said Jay, laughing.

Alban winced, and steadied himself, almost bowled over by my attack on the pancake plate.

That was new. I, scrawny Ves, was big and muscly enough to knock over a troll.

‘Ves?’ said Alban. ‘That is you, isn’t it?’

I lifted my head, chewing an enormous mouthful of crisp pancake batter and mixed-fruit ice cream. ‘Obviously?’ I said, spraying syrup.

The word emerged as a whinny.

‘Damnit,’ I sighed. Another whinny.

‘It has to be Ves,’ said Jay. ‘You sent her off with Addie, and Addie’s here. How likely is it that there are two pancake-obsessed unicorns living on the Society’s doorstep?’

‘Obsessed?’ I objected. ‘I’m not obsessed. I can stop anytime I want.’ I punctuated this statement with an emphatic gulp of sweet, delicious food, and then took a determined step back, shaking my head.

This was real heroism, I thought, mournfully eyeing the plate. Forget precision-strike raids on ancient magickal towers, and wresting vital magickal history out of the proverbial grave. Refraining from eating the last mouthfuls of pancakes and ice cream? That was the stuff of legend.

‘Fine, I take it back,’ said Jay, grinning. ‘You aren’t in the least bit obsessed with pancakes.’

I nodded my satisfaction, made a lunge for the plate, and swallowed the last morsels in two bites.

‘Right, so,’ said Jay, patting my neck. ‘We’ve found Ves. Now what?’

Alban set the plate down in the grass, and I devoted myself to licking it clean of every last drop of syrup. ‘Milady said to bring her in, no?’

‘I have no idea how we’re going to get her up all those stairs.’

‘Maybe House can help with that.’

‘Might do,’ Jay agreed. Then he added, ‘Come to think of it, I have no idea how we’re going to get her out of this glade.’

‘She does look comfortable,’ Alban agreed.

I beamed. I was comfortable. ‘I was born to be a unicorn,’ I informed them both.

‘Uh huh.’ Jay looked a little wide-eyed as he stared at me. ‘I possibly don’t want to know what you just said.’

I bumped Addie with my shoulder, rubbed my nose against her side, and waited. If I stood here and looked pretty, would someone show up with more pancakes? This approach had been working pretty well for Addie.

‘You want to come with us, Ves?’ said Jay. ‘Milady wants to see you.’

I twitched my tail, thinking it over. Or, I tried. Memories slipped away like the water-weeds I’d tried to eat from the lily pond. I knew these men; they were dear to me. But they belonged to another time, one that faded like a dream whenever I tried to fix my thoughts upon it.

Stray memories of chocolate-pots and endless stairs floated through my mind; of velvet-clad wingback chairs, and heavy piles of books; of a huge desk in a huge library, Val sitting behind it; of a long avenue of trees, sometimes upside-down, and Zareen with a poison-green streak in her hair.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, licking syrup from my lips. ‘It’s peaceful here.’

‘Come on,’ said Jay. ‘Please? The Society needs you.’

I snorted.

‘We need you,’ added Jay.

‘True,’ said Alban. ‘We do. Pup’s lost without you. Val told me she’d chop off your horn if you didn’t come home. And Zareen sent this.’ He held up his phone. Letters on the screen swam about a bit, and came into focus: Ves, get your sorry butt back Home or you’ll be SORRY.

My ear twitched. Nobody wanted to get in the Queen of the Dead’s bad books.

‘The thing is,’ I said, sidling about a bit. ‘I don’t seem to have any hands.’

Jay sighed. ‘I wish we knew what she was saying.’

‘Or feet,’ I continued. ‘Or arms. You can’t be much of an agent without a few things like that, and I’ve kind of lost mine.’

Jay and Alban blinked blankly at me.

‘Do you happen to know how to de-horn me?’ I said. ‘Not in the way Val said. Do you have any idea how to make me Ves-shaped and humanoid? Because damned if I do.’ I wasn’t altogether sure I wanted to be Ves-shaped and humanoid again; I had the vague but settled sense that I had been making a right royal mess of being Ves, lately. I’d been okay as a unicorn. I was good as a unicorn.

‘Why don’t you just come with us?’ said Jay. ‘And we’ll see what happens? Nod once for yes. Shake for no.’

I stamped a foot.

‘Is that yes?’ said Jay.

I gave a horsie sigh, nipped affectionately at Addie’s neck, and stomped off towards the Glade’s entrance.

‘Ooh, we’re going,’ said Jay, and ran after me.

I left the Glade with a dual escort, Jay’s hand resting on the left side of my neck, Alban’s hand upon my right. I felt fine. I felt great.

Only, once we were over the threshold, everything fell apart. The lovely, fizzy feeling of magick-down-to-my-bones faded away, and with it, my flowing, shampoo-advertisement mane. When I tossed my head, the satisfying thwoosh of my horn slicing through empty air abruptly disappeared. I put up a hand, and groped around atop my own head.

‘Damnit,’ I sighed. ‘Did it have to be that easy…?’

‘Welcome back, Ves,’ said Jay, and I waited in general expectation of being hugged by somebody.

It didn’t happen. My gentleman companions were, if anything, edging away from me.

‘Oh, come on. I don’t get a welcome-back-to-two-legged-kind squish?’

‘Clothes,’ Jay coughed.

I looked down.

There weren’t any.

‘It did feel a bit draughty out here,’ I said nonchalantly. ‘Anybody lend me a something?’

Jay looked helplessly at Alban. Here in the height of summer, nobody needed coats much, and neither of them was wearing one. A jaunty sun bathed us in such balmy warmth, I wouldn’t have minded proceeding without clothes, except that I was clearly making my gentlemen uncomfortable.

‘Alban,’ I said, beaming. ‘I could wear your shirt like a dress.’

I could, too. The hem would probably hit me somewhere around mid-thigh, which was enough to preserve modesty until I could pick up some of my own clothes.

My request had nothing whatsoever to do with a desire to see a certain dishy troll without his shirt. Honest.

‘All right,’ said Alban, and my heart leapt.

But instead of stripping off his white, long-sleeved shirt, he plucked at it with both hands, and made a peeling motion. Another shirt came away in his hands, identical to the first. He shook this second shirt out, and gave it to me.

‘Nice trick,’ I said, and put it on. It might not be Alban’s real shirt (I guess?), but it was still faintly warm from his skin. I rolled up the sleeves a bit more.

‘I don’t have a lot of magick,’ said Alban, with a wry smile. ‘And I can’t do anything useful with it. But sartorial quandaries I can certainly solve.’

‘My hero,’ said I, and Jay rolled his eyes.

‘Welcome back, Ves,’ said Milady a little later.

I’d been delivered up to her tower by my joint escort, and they had left me there for a no-doubt minute debriefing. I’d dived past my own room on the way up, and grabbed a summer dress out of my wardrobe, plus a pair of sandals. It wouldn’t do to present oneself before Milady in nothing but a borrowed man’s shirt. I’d also found my shoulder-bag lying upon my bed, with all my stuff in it. No Mauf, though.

‘How long was I gone?’ I asked.

‘About three weeks.’

‘That’s… longer than I thought.’

‘And how did you enjoy your sojourn among the unicorns?’

‘It’s like I was one of them.’

‘Indeed.’ The air sparkled with her mirth. ‘Do you feel… in health?’

‘You mean, am I still an out-of-control magickal fountain, causing chaos wherever I go? No. I think… I think I’m okay.’

And I was. I still fizzed oddly with magick from time to time, and I couldn’t absolutely swear that weird things wouldn’t happen around me once in a while. But I felt more… centred. Less like a storm in a teacup. More like the old Ves. Kind of.

My bond with Addie, formed through the unusual and unexpected expedient of adopting her shape, her lifestyle and her company for three long weeks, held strong even when I was back in my regular configuration. I felt it, close to my heart, an invisible link across which magick flowed like the cool waters of the lily stream.

‘The Glade is a safe repository for the excess,’ said Milady with approval. ‘It is fortunate that you were able to bond with Adeline.’

‘Fortunate,’ I agreed, thinking of all the “fortunate” things that tended to happen around Milady. I hovered on the brink of asking her about my clairvoyance theory, and… didn’t. Did I lack the courage?

Apparently.

‘The lyre has been delivered back to your mother,’ Milady continued. ‘Jay has submitted a full report of its effects upon you. This is under investigation.’

‘Great.’

‘You may also like to know that Miranda is back with the Society.’

‘Ah…?’

‘She has not yet been restored to her former privileges and position, but I have hopes that this may come to pass in time.’

I said nothing.

‘Do you disapprove, Ves?’

‘I don’t trust her,’ I said bluntly.

‘We will all need time to rebuild our trust.’

‘Hmph.’ I swallowed my disgruntlement, and set the matter aside. Milady, invariably, knew best. ‘What about Torvaston’s research?’

‘Ah! Yes! You are all to be congratulated for such an exciting discovery. Your book — Gallimaufry — is with the library at present; Valerie is consulting him regarding the various records and copies he was able to make during your mission. Jay’s pictures also. The Court, meanwhile, has been loud in its praise of you all. They are extremely pleased with the results you were able to produce.’

‘Cool,’ I said. ‘And?’

‘I don’t precisely understand the question.’

‘Are we building a new Heart of Hyndorin?’

‘The Court appears to favour the term magickal modulator.’

‘Snappy. How nicely it alliterates.’

‘Quite. It is not yet known whether we will be able to recreate Torvaston’s work, but naturally we are prepared to try. Once the plans have been suitably processed, studied and stored, they will be delivered to Orlando. The Court will also be sending us one or two of their own inventors, to assist with the work.’

‘We do seem to be forging close links with the Court these days.’

‘Our goals happen to align.’

I fiddled with my own fingers, and shifted from foot to foot.

‘What is it, Ves?’ said Milady.

‘Can I come Home?’ I blurted. ‘Can we come home? It’s been wild working for the Court, but…’ I couldn’t put my homesickness into words, and I didn’t try. Milady must know how I felt.

‘I believe the project may now be declared out of your hands,’ said Milady. ‘There is no need for any repeat missions to the fifth Britain at this time.’

‘And if the Ministry takes exception to the pursuit of Torvaston’s project, we’re calling it Mandridore’s fault?’

‘It is entirely their fault,’ said Milady serenely.

‘Does that mean yes?’

‘Yes, Ves, I think it does.’

I fist-bumped the empty air.

‘Though,’ said Milady. ‘You will find that Zareen is not presently in residence.’

‘Is she all right?’

‘She is in poor health. I have sent her for treatment.’

Probably she had gone back to the School of Weird, or some related facility. My heart twisted with regret. Poor Zar had taken a serious beating; worse than the rest of us. Had it been worth it?

‘I believe she will make a full recovery,’ added Milady. ‘But it will be some time before she will rejoin us.’

‘Soooo,’ I said, smiling in sheer relief. ‘Everybody’s okay.’

‘More or less.’

‘And we’re all Home. Or will be.’

‘I hope that you will all remain so.’

‘What’s my next assignment, Boss?’

‘Take some rest.’

I blinked. ‘That’s not very fun.’

‘But it is necessary. You are almost as much in need of restful recovery as Zareen.’

‘No way. I’ve had three weeks in unicorn paradise. I’m fine.’

‘Rest,’ said Milady firmly. ‘After which, I will have an exciting new job for you.’

My ears pricked up at that. ‘Ohhh?’

‘I cannot share too many details at present, but—’

‘Come on,’ I pleaded. ‘Don’t leave me in suspense!’

‘Well. If Orlando, and his team, conclude that a new modulator may be successfully created from Torvaston’s plans, then of course the Court will put such a project into immediate development.’

‘Yes!’

‘And that means that materials will be required.’

‘Materials… oooh. You mean magickal Silver.’

‘What the Yllanfalen refer to as moonsilver. Yes.’

‘Or skysilver. I can never remember which. Is that what we’re calling it?’

‘I think “suitable materials” will suffice.’

‘I suppose it’s as good a code word as any.’

‘As you must be aware, this kind of suitable material is in short supply,’ said Milady firmly, towing us back on track.

‘Yes. It’s supposed to be mined out, even on the fifth.’

‘I believe we can conclude that there are no more accessible, naturally-occurring sources of this material remaining.’

‘Maybe on one of the other Britains?’

‘There is little reason to think so. And if there were, I cannot in the least imagine how we would find them. Can you?’

‘Well… no. There— did Jay tell you? There is a stash of it in Torvaston’s tower.’

‘Yes, but he is not of the opinion that it would be possible, or indeed desirable, to try to take it.’

He had a point. Luan would never give it up willingly, certainly not for such a purpose. The Earl strongly disapproved of the whole idea of recreating Torvaston’s invention. And to flat-out steal it… no. We, the Society, were better than that. We had to be.

‘I do have another idea,’ said Milady.

I perked up. ‘Is this one of your hunchy-things?’

‘My what?’

I coughed. ‘Er, nothing.’

There was a slight pause.

‘The fact is,’ Milady resumed. ‘I have consulted Val.’

‘Always a good move!’

‘She reports the existence of one or two ancient resources which suggest an interesting alternative. It may no longer be possible to pull natural Silver out of the ground, but if history is to be believed, one or two individuals have undertaken serious attempts to create it.’

‘Alchemy?’ I blurted.

‘Exactly.’

‘But— but— alchemy’s a dead art. Nobody’s bothered with transmutation in years.’

‘No one has publically attempted alchemical transmutation in years,’ Milady corrected.

‘You know I’m a sucker for a nice, dark secret.’

‘Indeed. Let me worry about who is going to perform this transmutation. Your job is to discover the means.’

‘I’m on the hunt for a long-lost recipe?’

‘Yes. I want you and Val to find out if these documents are authentic, and their accounts reliable. If they are, then your next task is to unearth further resources.’

My heart performed a weird flutter of excitement. Library mission! Yes!

‘So,’ I said. ‘When you say “rest”…’

‘If some part of this period of recovery involves your spending time in the library, I shall be quite satisfied.’

‘Attended, perhaps, by a duvet and a pot of chocolate?’ I said hopefully.

‘I believe that will be acceptable.’

I whipped out my phone, now blessedly functional again. Val, I typed. Weeks-long library slumber party. You and me. Starting now.

‘I’ll get right on that,’ I told Milady.

The air sparkled again. ‘I thought you might.’

My phone buzzed. Message from Val. It said: Get down here, slowpoke.

I kicked up my heels, and got going.

Milady spoke once more as I wrenched open the tower door. ‘Ves?’ she called. ‘There’s chocolate in the pot.’

Let it be noted: there are drawbacks to radiating magick like some kind of arcane halogen heater.

It might sound like a good deal, and it certainly has its upsides (see: Zareen’s casual exorcism of a ten-strong haunting team, with a flick of her cadaverous fingers).

The downsides, though? For one, it should not be possible for other people to soak up magick like a sponge, just by touching me. It meant I wasn’t so much a magickal battery as a broken tap, spewing precious magickal resources every which way with no semblance of control. And if I wasn’t in possession of enough hangers-on to take some of the magickal overload, I’d probably burst.

That was really going to play hell with my social life.

For another thing, magick is super fun and all (see: never-ending chocolate pots, and rainbow hair), but it’s also scary as hell and dangerous beyond all reason. Give a furious and exhausted woman access to a convenient magickal reservoir, let her be possessed of terrifying necromantic powers, and top it all off by putting her in immediate danger, and… the results are not pretty.

Here’s what happened to Fenella Beaumont.

‘Shit,’ said Zareen, as Fenella rampaged in our direction, wearing the expression of a woman intent on nothing but our total destruction.

It was hard to blame her, even. We did have a regrettable way of wrecking her stuff.

‘Do you have any idea what you have just done?’ she screamed, mostly at Zareen, but her rage certainly included me. ‘Ten waymaster spirits! There probably aren’t another ten left in Britain! All that work — what we’ve expended — the rarity — my castle! Ruined!’

I listened, faintly intrigued. I’d never heard anyone literally splutter with fury before.

It occurred to me that I ought to be more worried, but I felt spacy and detached, like I existed on a different magickal plane to everyone else. Perhaps I did.

Zareen, though, was in no way detached. She squared up to Fenella, our own personal Queen of the Dead versus the woman who enslaved spirits, hauled entire castles from world to world, and had built a magickal organisation to rival every other known to man.

They ought to have been evenly matched.

They would have been, if it wasn’t for me.

‘Stop there,’ said Zareen, icy-cold, and her voice boomed and echoed, as though she spoke from the middle of a thunderstorm. Or as though she was the thunderstorm.

‘Or what?’ spat Fenella. ‘You’ve already done your worst.’ She whipped out a rose-quartz Wand, and power built around her in waves. Pressure built. Two elemental forces faced off against one another.

‘Ves,’ hissed Jay, and hands pulled at me. ‘You need to get out of here.’

I understood where he was coming from. Any bystanders to this particular fight were likely to end up smashed to smithereens, and I was already in a vulnerable state.

But, leaving Zar to face Fenella’s wrath alone was not an option. I shook my head, resisting his — and Alban’s — attempts to peel me away.

‘My worst?’ said Zareen, and smiled. ‘Not quite.’

I braced myself for an explosion of some kind, but… nothing happened.

Instead, I felt a faint woosh. A small ocean of magick poured out of me; Zareen took it, and with a tilt of her head and a blink of her coal-black eyes, she directed it with devastating force.

Fenella keeled over backwards, and lay inert as a stone.

For about five long seconds, no one spoke.

‘You’ve killed her,’ said Jay, and ran to kneel beside Fenella. He peered into her eyes, shook her, and finally checked her pulse. ‘She’s dead.’

‘She is not dead,’ said Zareen, and the thunder had yet to fade from her voice.

‘Stone dead,’ Jay said. ‘See for yourself.’

I, drained, slithered to the ground in an inelegant heap. As I released Zareen, the cadaver began to fade from her appearance. Her skin regained a little of its normal colour; flesh returned to her bones, and some of the black drained out of her eyes. She began to shake, but when she spoke again, her words emerged like steel bullets. ‘All right, she’s temporarily dead.’

‘Temporarily?’ I said, faintly. ‘What did you do to her?’

‘Soul-ripped her.’ Zareen spoke with awful casualness, and shrugged.

‘Which is what—’ I began.

Em said, ‘Her spirit is separated from her body.’ She gestured with one large hand, in a direction slightly removed from Fenella’s prone body. ‘She is, in ordinary parlance, a ghost.’

‘Zar.’ I sat up, my head spinning. ‘You can’t do that to people.’

Zareen gave a faint, huffy sigh. ‘I didn’t quite mean to. It isn’t something I can do, ordinarily.’

And so I learned that it was my fault. ‘Oh,’ I said, sagging. ‘Sorry.’

‘It isn’t something anybody can do,’ Zareen added, and now she sounded wondering and intrigued. She approached Fenella’s body, and eyed the dead woman with interest. ‘I’ll have to write an essay on it.’

‘It is in contravention of at least six magickal laws,’ Emellana pointed out.

‘Right,’ said Zar. ‘Maybe not the essay.’

‘In the meantime,’ said Jay, with emphasis. ‘What do we do about it?’

‘Do?’ Zareen echoed, blinking.

‘We can’t just leave her like this.’

Zareen shrugged. ‘It takes a lot to keep soul and body separate, if the body hasn’t actually died. She will soon find her way back. Or George will do it for her.’

‘Are you sure the body hasn’t died?’

‘I didn’t do anything to it, so I don’t see how it would’ve.’ Zareen began to sound annoyed.

And exhausted.

Me, I was losing all the good-in-a-bad-way feelings I’d had, and was coming to feel just plain bad. Like I needed to run up a mountain without stopping, and at the same time sleep for about twelve years. ‘Um,’ I said.

Nobody heard me. An argument flared up between Jay and Zareen, he (not unjustifiably) condemning her for her lack of concern over Fenella’s death, she hotly defending her conduct. Emellana, apparently appointing herself as mediator, oversaw the debate; I heard her calm voice chime in from time to time.

It was Alban who picked me up off the floor, where I’d been reclining in a most undignified posture, and steadied me on my feet. ‘Are you all right?’ he said.

‘No,’ I whispered, though his touch soothed a little. ‘I think… I think I’m going to need Addie.’

‘Right.’

‘And quickly.’

Here’s a little secret.

When I first met Adeline, quite a few years ago, she’d been hanging out in a proper Unicorn Glade situated surprisingly close to Home.

When I say “unicorn glade”, I mean that the place was hidden deep inside a tucked-away magickal Dell; it had the full complement of enchanted waters (smelling of nectar), jewel-green grasses, endless sunshine, and singing bees; and its unicorn residents numbered at least five, one of which had been Addie.

No one at Home had ever mentioned there being a Unicorn Glade on the doorstep. Even Milady had never made reference to it, despite knowing all about my friendship with Addie. To this day, I don’t know whether that’s because it is considered to be a deep, dark secret, or whether no one else actually knows about it.

Anyway, I haven’t been back since that one day I went there with the bag of chips, and came out with a new friend. I tried once, but I could not find it again.

Alban got me out of Ashdown Castle. I don’t really know how; I wasn’t entirely with it, anymore. There was rapid motion as I was swept out into the darkening evening beyond the castle’s gates, half-carried by my long-suffering friend, for I was too fascinated by the effects of my overabundant magick to remember quite how to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Every time I took a step, something happened. Flowers bloomed beneath my feet, grew toothy mouths, and tried to bite my ankles. Sparks flew up from the ground, and did their best to set fire to our clothes. I almost drowned in chocolate, when the grass under my feet abruptly turned molten and cocoa-scented, and I had to be hauled out — only to emerge with no trace of chocolate on my shoes.

It went on in this style, proving that while the effects of my peculiar state might be unpredictable and inconsistent, they were certainly going to be persistent. And inconvenient. I definitely heard Alban swearing, at one point.

‘Ves,’ he said, after a little while, and we stopped. We’d gone far enough away from Ashdown as to be out of sight. ‘The pipes? Time to summon Addie.’

‘Right.’ I dug around in my blouse, fumbling everything with trembling fingers.

Politely, Alban looked away.

‘Ha.’ I found the pipes, and held them triumphantly aloft. A stray beam of dying sunlight caught them, and they lit up like… well, like a magickal artefact of indescribable power.

‘Good,’ said Alban, and waited. When I remained where I was, gazing in frozen wonder upon the beauty of my syrinx pipes, he cleared his throat and said: ‘Go on. Play them. Play Addie’s song.’

I did that. The song got a bit more complicated than usual, as though the pipes were more or less playing themselves. ‘Wow,’ I said, when I/we had finished. ‘I’ve never been that good!’

Alban grinned. ‘You’re a mythical creature of limitless power. You’ll have to get used to that.’

‘That isn’t the idea, though, is it?’ I said, watching in fascination as the pipes morphed in my hand. ‘I’m to be drained of magic, like a wet dish cloth.’ The pipes became a conch shell in mother-of-pearl; a magickal Silver thimble; a miniature kingfisher, clad in gold; a rose the size of my fist, made of pure ruby.

In came Addie with a swoosh of her pearly-white wings, and a quadruple thud as her silvery hooves hit the turf. She dashed over to me and shoved me with her nose.

‘I’m fine,’ I lied, and all but fell on her.

She shoved me again, rudely. This wasn’t concern. This was anger.

‘Fine, I’m sorry,’ I babbled. ‘I know I took you far away from home, and got you captured by nefarious evil-doers, and then kind of ignored you for a while afterwards—’

She stepped on my foot. I paused to emit a faint shriek.

‘—but it isn’t that I don’t love you,’ I gasped, my eyes watering. ‘And I don’t even have any fried potato products with me to prove it, but I swear I will make up for that, Addie.’

Carefully, Alban extended a hand and patted Addie’s silky mane. Under his touch, she calmed maybe just a fraction.

‘I need help,’ I told her. ‘Look.’ I held out my left hand to show her. I still had a hand, which was nice, only the skin and muscle and bone was gone. I had a jewelled claw of a hand instead, and if I wasn’t crazy to even imagine it (always a possibility) I might have said it was wrought out of magickal Silver. My fingernails had a most attractive Silvery sheen.

‘This kind of crap is not going to stop,’ I said to Addie. ‘I also may have helped rip a woman into two separate pieces not long ago — physical and corporeal — and though Zar swears she’ll be fine I’m not sure, Addie. I’ve become a danger, old girl, and I don’t like it.’ A tear ran down my cheek, turning to something solid on its way down, and fell into the grass in a brief flash of bright gold.

‘No one’s going to blame you, Ves,’ said Alban, reaching for me.

‘I’m blaming me,’ I retorted. ‘I may not be at fault for my present condition — it’s not like I asked for it — but I am responsible for the outcome.’

‘Okay, but still—’ said Alban.

‘And what kind of a life can I have in this state? I can’t even hug a person without turning them into a sodding hippogriff.’

Alban, unable to produce a rational response, merely raised his brows.

‘It’s happened,’ I assured him. ‘Well, kind of. At the tower Jay was growing feathers and all that, so I hugged him out of it. But we’re all backwards out here, and it isn’t that Jay isn’t magickal enough for the environment, it’s that I am far too much so, so probably the effects will be the other way around too, right?’

‘Ves,’ said Alban, gently. ‘You’re stalling.’ He looked at me with such heart-melting compassion, I could’ve cried.

Forget that. I did cry, especially when he pushed me gently in Addie’s direction. ‘She’s waiting for you,’ he said, and he was right: she’d stopped tossing her head and snorting and stood patiently waiting for me to stop procrastinating and get my act together.

‘I’m afraid,’ I said, twining my fingers through Addie’s mane.

‘It will be all right,’ said Alban.

Then I was up on Addie’s back, and with powerful beats of her wide, beautiful wings, she bore us both up into the skies.

I stared down at Alban’s big, big frame as he dwindled to dwarfish proportions beneath us, and then vanished altogether. He was waving.

‘Take me somewhere safe, Addie,’ I pleaded, and buried my face in her mane.

She took me to her Glade. We came down softly in a carpet of thick moss, cool beneath my feet in the gathering twilight. I smelled nectar and fresh grass, and heard the soothing ripple of running water somewhere near.

I calmed at once, for the magick of Addie’s Glade had a depth to it; an ancient potency which somehow soothed the runaway chaos inside me. I stamped once, flicking an ear, as the night-time sounds of the peaceful Dell seemed to jump into sharper focus.

A dulcet breeze swept back my mane, and starlight glittered off the tip of my horn.

‘Addie!’ I called, for she was trotting away from me. The sound emerged as a penetrating whicker. ‘Wait for me!’

She looked back over her shoulder, one ear pointed straight up, and whickered back. Hurry up, then.

I hurried.

‘And where, exactly, are we going?’ Jay said coldly.

‘I think we are all feeling a little homesick, are we not?’ said Fenella pleasantly.

‘No!’ I blurted, and backed away — as if that would help. ‘I can’t go home yet!’

Fenella looked oddly at me.

‘So the plan is to kidnap the lot of us?’ said Jay disgustedly. ‘We work for you, whether we will or no?’

‘That remains to be seen,’ said Fenella. Her hostess smile had gone; her tone was now all business. ‘The fact is, I can’t have you trailing back to Mandridore with the copies of that research you have no doubt made. Or perhaps with an intact artefact you’d like me to imagine no longer exists. Ancestria Magicka will bring back British magick, and no one else.’

So that was it. Pure, naked ambition. I wasn’t surprised, but I was… out-manoeuvred. My mind blanked, and I couldn’t think. What could we do? Run for it? I made a break for the door, but Jay was there before me.

‘Locked,’ he said. ‘Give me a moment.’

Okay, he was going to punch one of his void-space holes in it. Fine, but then what? We might be able to subdue Fenella, but that would do us little good. We were in her territory. We wouldn’t get two steps beyond the door without running into more of her agents; overpowering them would slow us down. And George could be anywhere in the castle. We would never be able to find him in time to prevent him from dragging the building home.

‘Quickly,’ I said to Jay. Alban was at my elbow, and I caught a glimpse of Emellana’s purple shirt out of the corner of my eye. If we could make it to the main doors in time—

The floor began to shake. I grabbed hold of Alban to steady myself, as my heart sank and terror turned my knees to water. This was it. The castle was moments away from a potentially fatal removal to the sixth Britain — fatal for me, because all the magick in me would go off like a firework and I’d burst like a rotten melon.

‘Ves,’ said a calm, but firm voice in my ear. Emellana. ‘Help Zareen.’ Her capable hands grasped my arms; she turned me to face Zar, and gave me a gentle shove.

Help Zareen with what? My brain gibbered helplessly, and I gulped down panic. Curse it. You’d think I could face my imminent demise with a bit more grace.

Hands steadied me again, and this time they were Alban’s. ‘Calm, Ves,’ he said softly. ‘Em is right. Zareen can’t block George on her own, but with your help, perhaps she can.’

My help? I was no necromancer.

No, but I was presently functioning as a magickal power source all on my own. I was a human griffin. A magickal battery. I grabbed hold of Zareen, and tried to focus on emptying my unwanted magickal overflow into her. ‘I have no idea what I’m doing,’ I gasped.

Alban chuckled. ‘And you’ll pull it off anyway. You always do.’

But I wouldn’t. Not this time. Because we were too late.

Even as I struggled to pump Zar full of all the power she’d need to wrest the castle away from George, the shaking of the floor intensified, and the walls began the slow, deep rumble of agitated brickwork. Someone screamed, a tearing noise that turned my insides to goo.

Zareen. She shrieked again, and began to babble, and I realised it wasn’t her screaming; she was a conduit for the dead waymasters locked into the walls. She spoke — and keened — with their voices, all ten of them at once. Her face was a mask of agony. As I watched in horror, blood began to pour from the corners of her eyes.

‘Shit,’ I said. Never mind my imminent demise. Zareen was breaking into pieces before my stupid, helpless eyes.

I didn’t have time to think. I just grabbed hold of her in a clumsy bearhug, my hands circling her wrists, and tried to make one entity of the two of us. We were not Zareen and Vesper, necromancer and magickal energiser bunny. We were Veseen, or Zaresper, one uber powerful necromancer. George was nothing to us.

The shuddering intensified. With a deep, unhappy groan, the tormented stones of Ashdown Castle tore themselves free of the Hyndorin Enclave. We vanished out of the fifth Britain in the blink of an eye.

And arrived in the familiar, deteriorated sixth. Our own, dear, magickal backwater.

I might’ve preferred to be hit with a sledgehammer.

The way I’d felt in the Other Scarborough — strained, tense, hyperactive, buzzing with prickly, stinging energy — was nothing to this. I was eight hundred Vespers crammed into one skin. I was a lit firework, my fuse burning down, explosion imminent. My overwrought brain reeled, my skin burned, my eyes leaked enough tears to fill a small lake.

I could’ve made a small lake, with a flick of my shimmering fingers.

And that was the part I really did not like. The fact that I did. Burn though I might in the fires of my own magickal potential, hurt though it did, I didn’t want to let it go. I felt as I had in Farringale, when we’d wallowed in our first magickal surge. Only better, because now I was in control. I was the surge. I could do anything I wanted — at least until I shattered into a thousand pieces.

I’d have welcomed that disintegration rather than voluntarily relinquish all that power.

Vesper, I said in the silence of my fevered mind. We are in big trouble.

I passed out, I suppose. When I was able to wrest my awareness away from the bubbling well of magick taking over my soul, I found myself still in Fenella Beaumont’s crummy drawing-room, though I was now receiving a rather different view of it. Too much ceiling.

I lay cradled in Alban’s arms, which was humiliating and delicious at the same time. I smiled dreamily up at his dear face, bent over me with so much concern.

‘High as a kite,’ said Jay from somewhere nearby. ‘Don’t let go of her, Alban.’

‘Never,’ he solemnly agreed.

I watched in fascination as Alban’s appearance changed before my eyes. His hair, skin and eyes washed through several colours, and he began, gradually, to grow. Then he shrank. Then he grew.

‘You’re an inconsistent size,’ I informed him. ‘Sorry.’

He grinned. ‘Actually, it’s you that’s changing.’

‘Oh.’ I thought, as best I could past the fog in my head. What had happened when I’d hugged Jay, back at the tower? He had absorbed some of my magickal overflow, which had been a good thing at the time.

Alban was now doing the same, and it wasn’t such a good thing this time. But he was bearing it.

Someone had hold of my wrist, too. I’d thought it was Alban, but when I checked I saw Jay’s slim brown fingers wrapped around my hand.

Miranda sat at my feet. She had a grip on my ankle, and she didn’t look too pleased about it. But between the three of them, they were siphoning enough off me to keep me in one piece.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘Anytime,’ said Jay.

I watched for a second as waves of magick pulsed through all three of them, doing some decidedly weird things. I’d really have to get a better grip on all that. I didn’t suppose Jay much appreciated growing feathers, though the silvery eye thing was pretty cool.

I looked around.

Em had done something to Fenella. I couldn’t tell what, but I did not imagine Ms. Beaumont had taken a seat in Emellana’s enormous armchair by choice. She sat with rigidly upright posture, her face fixed in her hostess smile, her hands gripping the chair’s tapestried arms. She did not move a muscle.

I caught Em’s eye. Somewhere at the back of my mind, beneath the chaos, a feeling of foreboding stirred. Whatever Em had done, it looked eerily like a total subjection of Fenella Beaumont’s will. The kind of binding the enchanters of Vale had used upon their unicorns and griffins. The same thing, I suspected, that Fenella had done to both Em and Alban, though with less effect.

Utterly illegal in our Britain, of course.

Emellana met my gaze calmly. Had she winked? Was that my imagination? ‘Ves,’ she said. ‘Help Zareen.’

Again with the helping Zareen? Hadn’t I done that enough? I’d already ascertained that Zar was still alive and breathing, which was about as much as I’d hoped for by then. She sat slumped against the wall, white as a sheet, but the blood had ceased to spill from her eyes.

Those eyes, though, were still coal-black, and she was breathing too quickly. ‘Yes,’ she said, hearing her name, and her gaze settled on me. ‘Help me, Ves.’

She spoke far too calmly, under the circumstances, and those eyes gave me the shivers. Nonetheless, I sat up. ‘What are we doing?’

‘Mass exorcism.’

‘Oh.’

She came slowly to her feet, and steadied herself against the wall. ‘George was supposed to help me, but since he’s otherwise occupied…’

I tried to get a look out of a window. ‘Where are we?’

‘Back in the castle grounds. And here it shall stay.’

‘Make some haste,’ said Emellana. ‘She is a strong woman. I cannot hold her indefinitely.’

I wanted to just bomb out of there and go Home, but Zareen was right. We had some housekeeping to do.

I held out my hand to Zareen. ‘The rest of you had better let go,’ I suggested. ‘For a bit. Zar gets the lot.’

Alban set me on my feet, and released me, to my distant regret. I focused my attention on Zar, who, with my infusion of raw magick, was rapidly turning scary-as-hell. Again.

And I’m really not kidding. It wasn’t just the eyes. She’d been way too pale before, but now she turned stark white in an instant, and sort of ethereal, like she was half-ghost herself. She radiated an icy frigidity, cold as the grave, and my fingers froze in her grip. Magick swirled around us both, ice-cold, smelling of fresh earth and decay.

The bones stood out in Zareen’s face. She was half cadaver, a creature of nightmares.

I hung grimly on, and shut my eyes to block out the sight.

But instead of the soothing blackness I’d expected, I received a different vision. I saw — or sensed — the outlines of the castle, magick glimmering in every brick. Shadowed motes blossomed all over the beleaguered place, grave-cold, trailing miasmas of despair. Were these the dead waymasters? I saw why Zareen had been so enraged. Every scrap of light or warmth had been wrested from them; they cowered, shattered and exhausted.

They deserved peace.

But peace was not quite what Zareen delivered. I felt her beside me, radiating icy fury. She was stronger than ever before; we were strong. We were one again, for an instant, and she was a queen of the dead as she stretched out her will and took hold of every one of those dark presences.

Then, with the negligent twist of a gardener uprooting a weed, she ripped them free of their earthly bindings and sent them sailing into the void.

With something like a gusty exhalation, Ashdown Castle settled around us, brick by brick, its animating forces dispatched.

‘No,’ gasped Fenella, twitching. ‘My castle.’ She was moving, slowly but surely, and though Em fought to hold her, she’d lost her grip. Fenella Beaumont, powerful as she was arrogant, wrested herself free of Emellana’s magick and surged to her feet. Ignoring Em, her face twisted with fury, she made straight for Zareen — and me.

The last time I’d seen Fenella Beaumont, she had been wearing a flashy designer evening-gown and too many diamonds. She’d hosted a massive party for a large group of magickal invitees — including us — in this very castle, specifically for the purpose of breaking the news about the fifth Britain. Jay and Zareen and the Baron and I had wrecked her little coup, which hadn’t exactly made us popular with her.

Her smiling friendliness unnerved me. So angry had she been about our interference, she’d taken an axe to poor Millie’s doors and windows. Now she welcomed us to her ancestral castle with impeccable manners and a smooth smile — the same castle Zareen had lately endeavoured to wrest from her entirely, with the help of George Mercer, supposedly one of her own employees. Was her friendliness purely because we had the answer to all her wildest magickal dreams in our possession? Fenella’s stated ambition was to revive magick in our own Britain, no doubt for nefarious purposes of her own. Torvaston’s invention would be as exciting to her as it was to us.

Still, I would have expected at least a genteel insult or two, delivered through that smiling mouth. Her elegant self-possession was out of character for a woman capable of hacking through solid oak doors in a fit of temper, and her air of gracious welcome was over the top.

And her captives now included all the people responsible for the collapse of her carefully-nurtured plans.

‘I do believe we’re in for a double crossing,’ I murmured to Jay and Zareen, as we followed Fenella through Ashdown Castle’s great hall.

Jay agreed. ‘I don’t think it’s going to be as simple as hand over the scroll and high-tail it out of here.’

Zareen’s only response was a black look of pure hatred. I wondered briefly what had passed between them during the days they’d been stranded in some other Britain together, and decided not to enquire.

‘You okay, Zar?’ I said.

‘No,’ she said shortly.

Fair enough.

Mission Objective: Retrieve Alban, Emellana and Miranda from Fenella Beaumont’s clutches, preferably without handing over any part whatsoever of Torvaston’s ancient research, then fly like bats out of hell. Before any of us went stark raving bonkers (again), or did anything we might regret; and without falling prey to any of Ms. Beaumont’s inevitable schemes for our downfall.

Easy.

The long drawing-room turned out to be a vision in sage-coloured silk and brocade, and in surprisingly good shape considering the tumbling-down state of the castle. It had the pristine, polished look of recent refurbishment, though since the room’s historic character had been meticulously preserved, it had to have been expensive. Very expensive.

Was the entire castle scheduled for a similar upgrade? The money it would take to restore Ashdown to its original condition would run into breath-taking sums, and I wondered, once again, where Ancestria Magicka’s cash came from. The Beaumont family had sold the castle to the corporation, which Fenella claimed to have founded. But that sale had been made because the family was virtually destitute. Either Fenella had somehow made eye-watering sums of money while she’d been somewhere off the radar (and if so I seriously wanted to know how); or they had an incredibly wealthy backer somewhere. We still didn’t know who that might be.

‘Nice paint job,’ I said lightly as we walked in. ‘Must’ve cost a bit.’ I scanned the room as I spoke. Alban stood near the fireplace, leaning one arm against the mantelpiece. He looked up at the sound of my voice, and smiled, but there was tension in every line of his body, and the smile was strained and forced. Emellana sat in a huge armchair a few feet away, ostensibly her usual serene self, though with a watchfulness about her that I hadn’t before seen. She looked at me without smiling, and I could not read what might be going on in her mind. Both of them looked oddly docile, considering their predicament. Either they were under some kind of enchantment courtesy of Fenella, or they were planning something, and waiting for the right moment to strike. Which was probably our arrival.

Things could get interesting, pretty soon.

Miranda stood by the window, looking thunderous. She glanced at me, and looked away, but not before I’d got a glimpse of the terror that lay behind her rage. Hardly surprising either. She’d lately betrayed the Society in favour of Ancestria Magicka, then betrayed Ancestria Magicka in order to help the Society, and now she was surrounded by representatives of both. Not an enviable position to be in.

Her own fault. I hardened my heart, at least for the present, and set that matter aside. We would get her out. What she did after that would be up to her.

‘It cost quite a bit,’ said Fenella drily, and waved a hand, indicating the glittering contents of her drawing-room as though she was personally responsible for the lot. ‘Like what you see?’

Actually, I did. The room was a vision of possibility. All the castles and great houses of Britain could look like this, if only there was money enough. But there never was. Most of them mouldered away under minimal maintenance, and too many fell into ruin. ‘It’s magnificent,’ I said, with total honesty.

She smirked. ‘What if I told you it wasn’t money that did this? Or, not only money.’

‘Then what was it?’

‘Magick.’ She stood between me and her hostages, watching me like some kind of widow spider. She was more casually dressed than she’d been the last time we had met, in a blouse and trousers, her silvery hair caught up in a simple knot. But she still reeked of money, and she had the predatory air to match.

‘So it’s illusion?’ I said, disappointed. Fakery was of little practical use.

‘No. Everything that you see here is real.’

‘I’m confused. You used magick to reupholster some chairs…? I suppose, if you’ve got the manpower—’

‘You aren’t thinking, Ves.’ Fenella cut me off.

‘Don’t call me Ves,’ I snapped.

‘Ves,’ said Alban. ‘They’ve used magick to regenerate everything in this room.’

‘Regenerate?’

He met my eyes, and nodded. He didn’t have to say anything else. My mind was already reeling.

See, regenerating damaged or decayed objects — or creatures — is one of the many arts we’ve just about lost. If it ever existed within the realms of possibility at all, and there are multiple schools of thought on that topic. It’s why the Society employs ordinary doctors, like Rob, despite having some of the most powerful magickal practitioners alive on its payroll. It’s why the team Miranda used to head up included a couple of veterinarians, and why we have conservators and restorers on the staff. Regenerating anything that’s broken or injured would require such huge expenditures of magick, it hardly bears thinking about. I mean, can you imagine what it would take, to turn back the clock like that?

There simply isn’t magick enough left in the world.

‘That has to be a lie,’ I said.

‘Why?’ said Fenella. ‘Possibilities abound beyond the borders of our own Britain. You have seen that for yourself.’

That silenced me. I hadn’t previously had any clear idea as to what Fenella and Co might want to do with Torvaston’s magick-regulating project, but I’m fairly sure the word “nefarious” passed through my thoughts.

This wasn’t nefarious. This was brilliant.

And exactly the right thing to wave in front of me, curse her.

‘Well, great,’ I said briskly. ‘Good for you. Anyway, about our colleagues?’

‘Perhaps they would like to remain here,’ said Fenella, in her silkiest voice. ‘Perhaps you might, too.’

‘No,’ said Jay briefly.

I rolled my eyes. ‘Another subversion attempt? No, thank you. We are never going to be interested.’

‘Oh?’ said Fenella politely. ‘At least one of your number has not been quite so impervious, has she?’ She looked at Miranda, whose face darkened even further. ‘And your own loyalties have proved to be more… flexible, than might have been expected.’

Damnit. Here was the backlash from Milady’s clever, Ministry-dodging schemes. As far as Fenella knew, we had abandoned the Society some weeks ago: ostensibly in favour of founding our own rival organisation, though now we were here under the Troll Court’s aegis. If we appeared unreliable, it was kind of our own fault.

‘We are not interested,’ I said firmly. ‘We want to make the exchange and then leave. Please.’

Sadly, Fenella shook her head. ‘How heart-breaking it is, to watch so remarkable a group waste your talents on such backward-thinking organisations. Bring Torvaston’s work to us. Give us exclusive control over it. We will do all the beautiful, magnificent, world-changing things the Court would never countenance. And you can be a big part of that, Ves.’

‘Don’t call me Ves.’

She gave a tiny sigh, and looked at Jay, and then Zareen. Both of them shook their heads.

I felt a moment’s unease. Clearly she had been having this conversation with Alban, Em and Miranda before we had arrived. They had refused — surely?

Of course they had. Emellana was as steady as a rock, and she’d been loyal to Mandridore all her long life through. And Alban’s devotion to his adoptive parents could not be questioned, considering everything he had taken on — and given up — for them.

I wasn’t sure about Miranda, and she would not meet my eye.

‘You’re getting Torvaston’s research anyway,’ I said to Fenella. ‘Just as soon as you release our friends. And then we will be leaving.’

‘I would prefer to have… everything.’

‘That is not going to happen.’

‘A pity,’ said Fenella, her smile still in place. She held out her hand. ‘I will take whatever it is you retrieved from that tower, then.’

‘The artefact no longer exists,’ I told her. ‘Torvaston destroyed it. But we have his plans.’ I withdrew the delicate scroll from my bag, and offered it to her. ‘Release our companions, and you may take it.’ And please don’t look at it now.

She made no move to do so. ‘Lovely,’ she said, regarding me with narrowed eyes. ‘But what a pity that the artefact no longer exists.’

‘Isn’t it?’ I agreed. If she imagined we were hiding the thing from her, well, that was a species of red herring. Perhaps it would keep her too busy to think of inspecting the scroll.

‘Well!’ said Fenella, turning to smile brightly at Alban, Emellana and Miranda. ‘It appears we are finished here.’ She inclined her head to them, apparently in respect, and something changed. Emellana sat up, blinking, and Alban straightened.

Miranda bolted, straight for the door. Alban and Em followed. Once all my friends were safely on my side of the room, with an open door behind us, I tossed the scroll to Fenella, who caught it with a flourish.

‘Perfect,’ she said, and waved the scroll in dismissal. ‘Delightful of you to visit. We must do this again sometime.’

Did that mean we were free to go? All of us? Without interference? I hesitated, alarms blaring in my mind. This was far too easy.

‘Ves,’ said Zareen. ‘She’s up to something. The ghosts— they’re—’ She broke off, crossed quickly to the nearest wall, and laid a palm against the silk wallpaper, her eyes closing.

The drawing-room door abruptly slammed shut behind us, with a resounding boom, and I heard the tumblers rattle as the lock turned.

Crap.

‘They’re what?’ I said. ‘Zar?’

‘George,’ she hissed, and her eyes flew open again, to settle accusingly on Fenella. ‘You made him do this.’

Fenella smiled. ‘George has remembered which side his bread is buttered. Shall we say that?’

‘Zar,’ I said. ‘What’s going on?’

‘They’re agitated. George is waking them up, making them—’ She paused for breath. ‘They’re preparing to move the castle.’

Uh oh. ‘Can they do that so soon?’

‘George is forcing them.’ These words emerged as a growl. ‘You can’t do this,’ she said, fixing Fenella with a wrathful stare. ‘This is why none of us wants to work with you. You use people for your own ends, and you use them until they break. You’ve broken George, and you’ll destroy these waymasters.’

‘They are dead,’ said Fenella.

‘They’re still people.’ Zareen’s eyes went ink-black from lid to lid, and she snarled something I couldn’t decipher. She was fighting back, trying to block George’s efforts to whip up the waymasters Fenella had enslaved.

She didn’t have the strength for that. Not now. She’d break, too, and I wasn’t at all sure if she would mend.

But I didn’t know how to stop her, or George either.

‘By the looks of it, Ashdown Castle is lying in wait,’ said Jay.

‘For us,’ I groaned. ‘This is what Alban meant, when he said Ancestria Magicka had some kind of a spy at Court. They knew we were headed out here.’

‘And they hoped we would be coming out with something priceless.’

‘Which we are.’

‘We can’t let them get hold of those plans,’ said Jay.

‘But that’s why they’re here. And they’ve got Alban and Emellana and Mir. They must do. And they’re waiting for us to walk right into the trap, which we are presently in the process of doing.’

‘Hostage situation?’ said Jay.

‘Right. They’ll try to trade our friends for our loot. And ordinarily I wouldn’t hesitate to go for a trade like that, but this is no ordinary loot.’ I backed up until Ashdown Castle disappeared from sight, then dumped my bag on the floor and crouched over it, rummaging through the contents. ‘Mauf, speak,’ I said, locating my precious book at the bottom. ‘Tell me you’ve got a grip on that scroll.’

‘I have done my best, madam.’

That would have to be enough. ‘The fate of the world rests in your hands,’ I informed Mauf as I drew out the scroll.

‘Regrettably, I have no hands,’ Mauf pointed out.

‘Your capable pages, then,’ I said, but absently, for I was busy eyeballing the scroll. ‘Or, maybe not entirely. Jay, got your phone handy?’ I’d let mine fall into the depths of my jumbled bag of paraphernalia, and it could take way too long to find it.

Jay however whipped his out in seconds, and was already snapping pics the moment I had the scroll unrolled. ‘But this isn’t helpful,’ he objected. ‘Keeping our own copies is good. Giving Ancestria Magicka the original is unthinkable.’

‘I know.’ My hands trembled as I gripped the aged vellum of that priceless scroll, and I had to take a moment to get a grip on myself. What I was about to do went as badly against the grain as defacing library books, or torching Orlando’s lab.

It took very little power, in the end. I watched sadly as the inked lines of Torvaston’s elaborate drawings began to fade.

‘Ves, no—’ Jay began, but it was already too late. I held a blank sheet of parchment in my hands. The original plans for the Heart of Hyndorin were gone forever.

Quickly, I rolled the scroll back up and secured it, then placed it back into the bag with Mauf. ‘Guard that phone with your life,’ I told Jay, and without speaking he zipped it into an inside pocket in his jacket.

‘Right,’ I said, straightening up. ‘It’s time for an exciting game of chance. Are you ready?’

‘You’re going to bluff your way through a hostage exchange?’ Jay said.

‘Do you have a better idea?’

Jay looked at me like I’d grown a second head. Again. I felt a twinge of disappointment, for it had been a while since he’d looked at me with such naked horror. I’d thought I was making some progress in his esteem.

Well. I had just callously erased the contents of a priceless academic artefact. And if we didn’t play our collective cards right, we’d either get our friends back but lose all trace of the plans, or we’d lose the lot. Including Alban, Em and Mir.

I tried not to think that way. Ancestria Magicka may be thoroughly unscrupulous, but they’d yet to show signs of murderous tendencies.

Still, the stakes were high. Dangerously high.

‘Are you with me or not?’ I said, skipping over the soothing platitudes. I wanted Jay to trust me, but we didn’t have time for long, self-justifying conversations just then.

‘Lead on,’ said Jay briefly, without the professions of faith and loyalty I was hoping for.

Oh well. When I set off in the direction of Ashdown Castle, Jay came with me, and that was the important part.

‘Are we just going to walk right up to the door?’ said Jay a moment later, as we approached the castle in full view of the windows.

‘Why not? They knew we’d come. They are waiting for us.’

‘It doesn’t seem right. No sneaking? None?’

‘What would be the point? It’s very hard to sneak past a castleful of people on high alert, looking specifically for you. Anyway, I want them to think they’ve won. That’s the whole point.’

‘Right.’ I detected more than a trace of doubt in the word, but Jay strode on beside me. ‘Where did Pup go?’ he said.

‘That… is a very good question.’ I’d momentarily forgotten about Pup’s headlong gallop, while I was grappling with the morality of erasing an irreplaceable scroll versus leaving my friends to an unknown fate. What had Goodie been haring towards?

Then something barrelled into me, something heavy, and knocked me flat. ‘Ves!’ said a familiar voice. ‘Don’t go in there!’

‘Zar?’ I pushed her off me, and tried to sit up, but she shoved me back down again. She had contrived to do the same to Jay, and we all three lay prone in the grass.

Something tickled my ankle. When I lifted my head to investigate, I beheld a bundle of tufty yellow fur and an enormous nose, the latter in pursuit of an enchanting scent relating to my left foot.

Ah. Pup had caught a whiff of Zareen on the wind, and boldly tracked her down.

‘Zar,’ I said again. ‘What the dickens are you doing here?’

‘Same as you,’ she said. ‘I was drawn here by wicked, deceitful arts, courtesy of our best friends Ancestria Magicka.’ She spoke with a vicious bitterness most out of character for her, and when I looked at her I beheld her usually calm face creased into a dark scowl. Her green-streaked hair was in a state of wild disorder; deep shadows under her eyes proclaimed her exhaustion; and she was pasty-pale, which wasn’t usual for her either. She’d had a hard week, clearly. But she was alive.

I felt a knot of tension ease somewhere inside. I’d been worried about Zareen for some time, but with no idea where she had ended up and no way to follow, I hadn’t been able to do anything about it. ‘What happened to you?’ I said, but when I tried to sit up she pushed me back down again.

‘Ves, you can’t let them know you’re here. That’s what they want. They’re waiting for you.’

‘We know.’

She blinked. ‘Then what the hell are you doing?’

‘Tell you in a minute. First, fill us in.’

She sighed, and let her head fall back into the grass. ‘George and I were working on those trapped spirits in the castle, trying to calm them down. Get them together. Build them up for one last jump, to a permanent new location for the castle. Then we were going to release them.’

‘I remember that part,’ I said. ‘No joy?’

‘Actually, we were doing pretty well. Until Fenella Effing Beaumont showed up, with her miserable crowd of cronies. Apparently they remembered a few things.’

‘Ah. Then Melmidoc happened?’

‘Right. He got pissed, and banished the entire castle to the worst Britain ever, do not go there, I am not kidding. The entire castle, Ves, with me and George in it, and Fenella and co as well.’ She paused for an instant, then continued, ‘George declared himself “done” with being dragged around after me, and the “stupid” stuff we were doing, and abased himself before Fenella, who graciously welcomed him back into the fold. Which left me, hiding in the walls while the lot of them played hunt-the-chicken, and George tried to coax me to throw in my lot with them.’

That explained both her exhaustion and her anger. I sensed a lengthy rant pending, but Zar got a grip on herself. ‘Long story short,’ she said. ‘It was some days before the castle could return to the fifth. In that time, I heard a few snatches of conversation between Fenella and some of her ratty disciples. They knew far too much about what you were doing, Ves. They probably knew about your current mission before you did. They had a plan to get hold of a certain scroll-case, which fell through; I didn’t catch why. The new plan was to lie low for a while, let you do the work while imagining yourselves unopposed, then swoop in at the end and swipe the goods.’

‘Which is where we’re at,’ said Jay, and gestured at the castle. ‘Swooping in progress.’

‘Yes, but you don’t have to just walk in there like a pair of idiots! Why do you think I risked discovery, in order to wait here for you?’

I patted her arm. ‘It was brilliant of you, Zar, and we’re both grateful and admiring. But they have Alban, and Miranda, and Emellana.’

‘Emellana. That the troll lady with the purple shirt?’

‘Right.’

‘Mm. That wasn’t anticipated, I think. Did you have to leave three associates on the outside, standing around by themselves, just waiting to be kidnapped? They were sitting ducks.’

‘Actually yes, it was necessary. We would have much preferred to take them with us.’

‘Well, I hope whatever you got was worth it. They’re all in there, and it won’t be easy to get them out.’

‘Yes, it will. We just have to do whatever they want.’ With which words, I stood up again, resisting Zareen’s attempts to render me prone, and dusted grass seeds off my clothes. ‘Which I intend to do without delay.’

‘You can’t.’ Zareen stared at me, appalled. ‘I don’t have a clear idea what you two got a hold of, except that it’s game-changing.’

‘World-changing,’ I said, nodding. ‘Don’t worry. I have a plan.’

Zareen rolled her eyes.

‘She’s going to bluff,’ said Jay.

‘Bluff?’ repeated Zareen.

‘The timing will be tight,’ I said. ‘We need to make the trade, then get the lot of us out of there before they discover our sneaky double-cross.’

Zareen stared at Jay, as if to say, are you going along with this madness?

Jay shrugged. He’d gained his feet, too, and now fell in beside me. ‘Onward, captain.’

Zareen groaned, and said distinctly, ‘Fuck my life.’

‘It’s a good life,’ I said, smiling. ‘It may not feel like it right now, but someday you’ll remember what food and sleep and friendship are like, and it’ll be okay again.’ I held out my hand to her, and with another muttered curse she grasped it, and permitted herself to be hauled up. ‘How long has the castle been lurking out here?’

‘A couple of days.’

‘Right. Let’s go.’ We set off towards Ashdown Castle, me trying to walk like a woman of confidence and not like a woman whose legs felt like jelly and whose guts were churning with unease. What if I was wrong?

No time to worry about that now. I lifted my chin, and sailed towards the castle like I’d never heard the words reckless, mission-wrecking insanity in my life.

Some distance still lay between us and the front door. As we crossed it, walking at a brisk but leisurely pace, I had ample opportunity to observe the effects of repeated teleportation upon the crumbling old castle. It had been in poor shape to begin with, due to centuries of insufficient care. Three or four jumps across worlds had not been good for it. Some of its chimneys were gone, tumbled into pieces; windows were a mess of broken glass and warped leading; holes had opened up in the walls, where its mortar had crumbled and brown bricks had fallen away. A building on its last legs, so to speak. It wouldn’t be long before the walls collapsed and ceilings caved in.

I tightened my resolve. Ancestria Magicka had no respect for history, magickal or otherwise. No doubt they would do their utmost to justify themselves, and cajole us into taking their side. They wouldn’t receive an ounce of sympathy from me.

Throughout that nerve-wracking stroll, I had the prickly feeling of eyes upon me. Lots of eyes. And here came the proof, for as we neared the great oaken doors, they swung slowly open.

Fenella Beaumont herself stood upon the threshold, smiling graciously at us.

‘Welcome, Miss Vesper, Mr. Patel,’ she said smoothly. ‘And Miss Dalir. How charming of you to join us at last.’

Zareen’s scowl deepened. Before she could say anything, I cut in. ‘Ms. Beaumont. How about we glide past the chit-chat, and get down to business? We’re here to retrieve our friends.’

‘Do you know, I thought you might be?’ Her smile widened, and so did the doors. ‘Do come in. They await you in the long drawing-room.’

Invoking my Nerves of Steel, I followed Fenella Beaumont into the depths of enemy territory, Jay and Zareen and Pup right behind me.

‘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?’