Modern Magick

As one, the three gentlemen around me tensed, and stared into that pale light with wary intensity.

I didn’t. I did not really believe that anything horrible was going to come barrelling out of Farringale the moment the door was opened, nor did it. Nothing happened at all, actually, save that the breeze died down, leaving the air still and fresh once more.

I settled my bag more comfortably across my shoulders, briefly wishing that I had not filled it quite so enthusiastically. ‘Onward, then,’ I suggested, and went through the gate, water swishing soothingly about my ankles.

The gentlemen let me go first, and alone, which was not very gentlemanly of them at all. But Rob quickly caught up with me, fine fellow that he is, and we advanced together. For a few moments we were walking near-blindly into that cool light and could see nothing that awaited us, which was a little alarming, I will admit. But nothing leapt out at us; no unpromising sounds of rapid, unfriendly approach assailed our ears; all we heard was our own footsteps ringing, curiously melodically, upon a hard floor.

The light gradually ebbed. We passed through it, finding beyond an enveloping musty aroma, air thick with dust which caught in my throat; a noticeable drop in temperature, not at all welcome after the warm spring sunshine we had just left; and the silent remains of a dead street.

It was curiously narrow, that road, considering where we were. I had expected more from Farringale than a thin, crooked street lined on either side by high stone walls. Those walls were golden somewhere under the caking dust, which was more promising. But still, as entrances went, it did not seem fitting for so legendary a place.

Then we turned a corner, and there was the grandeur. The portal we had used was some kind of side entrance, I guessed, for we turned off it onto a wide, sweeping boulevard all paved in golden stone. Ornate lampposts lined the roadsides, each bearing an orb of crackling white light suspended by no obvious means. That those lights still operated appeared at odds with the deathly silence of the city; their eerie, lonely glow illuminated streets abandoned for hundreds of years. Why did they still burn?

Houses of golden stone or white brick were spaced out along the road, set some way back from the street. Each had a wide square of empty space before it, once host to gardens, perhaps, but now as dead and empty as everything else. Pools of still water had collected in some of them and gone green and stagnant; they gave off an unpleasant smell.

Above the hushed remains of lost Farringale rose sky upon sky upon sky. I have never seen sky like that, before or since. It was the deep, rich blue of twilight, though not because evening approached; the sun was high, the city well-lit. Airy palaces of roiling clouds hung heavy above us, as golden as the stone beneath our feet. It was a display of staggering beauty, which ordinarily would have pleased me greatly, but something about that vast sky made me uneasy. I walked a little nearer to Rob.

The boulevard veered gracefully to the left in a smooth curve, and we followed it. Jay and Alban had caught up with us by then, and we walked four abreast, our eyes everywhere. I began to realise something else strange, which did nothing to enhance my comfort: the city was too clean. The passage of more than three hundred years ought to have taken more of a toll, surely; Farringale should have resembled Glenfinnan in its decay, only being more advanced. But the streets were pristine; not even a single leaf presumed to drift over the smooth paving stones. The houses looked aged, but they were whole and sound, not crumbling as I would have expected. I could have moved into one of them and lived happily there, untroubled by leaking roofs or collapsing walls. There was no mess, no disorder. Only the dust, thick and clinging and smelling of dirt and age.

Was somebody keeping the city tidy? But that did not make any sense. We had seen no sign of life whatsoever, and moreover, the city felt empty. There was a depth to the silence, a profound hush, that precluded the possibility that Farringale was home to a company of fastidious street-sweepers. Something kept the city preserved — the same enchantments, perhaps, that kept the lights burning in the street lamps.

What any of that had to do with the strange sky was anybody’s guess.

‘Has it always been like that?’ I asked of Alban, gesturing at the sky.

‘I’ve never heard anything of the kind.’ He gazed long upon those vast golden clouds, and I saw that his eyes were very wide.

‘Interesting.’ I was feeling deeply unsettled, this I will admit. But I smothered the feeling and walked on, for I was as intrigued and excited as I was afraid. Farringale! My scholar’s heart danced with joy at the prospect of so many mysteries, all laid out here for my perusal.

Jay drew nearer to me. ‘I have a question,’ he said in an undertone.

‘Yes.’

I expected a question about Farringale, naturally, or some related topic. Instead he said: ‘Where did you get those pipes?’

‘That is a secret.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it pleases me to remain a woman of mystery.’

That won me an unfriendly stare. ‘How does that help you?’

‘Because I cannot otherwise get you to take me seriously. Something to do with my colourful dresses and mad hair, wasn’t it? How else am I going to hold my own with you?’

‘Okay, okay. I’m sorry I suggested anything of the kind. Please tell me about the pipes.’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Are you kidding? You whistled up a quartet of unicorns. Of course I want to know.’

Fair point. ‘I can’t tell you,’ I said, and cut off his objections with a wave of my hand. ‘I really can’t. I am not allowed.’

‘According to who?’

‘The Powers That Be.’

‘Aren’t you the rule-breaker extraordinaire?’

‘When I have good reason. This isn’t one.’

Jay gave a long, sad sigh. ‘I have another question.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why do you keep them in your, uh, undergarments?’

‘Imagine you suspect me of harbouring some magickal object of deep and ancient power, and you want to take it from me. Where are you going to look?’

‘Bag,’ said Jay promptly. ‘Pockets, maybe.’

‘Bra?’

‘Never.’

‘Right.’

‘Very clever.’

‘Thank you. I know that—’ I stopped talking, distracted by a flicker of colour glimpsed out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look, but saw nothing that could explain the soft flash of light, the blur of colours I’d thought I had seen. Just the same empty street, and a deserted, white-tiled plaza branching off it. Nothing moved.

‘What is it?’ asked Jay, who’d stopped a few paces farther up the road.

I shook my head, and caught up with him. ‘Nothing.’

We arrived at a wide intersection, and there we stopped, for nobody knew which of the three other streets that opened before us would take us where we needed to go. For that matter, nobody knew what we were aiming for. Our plan had not been a sophisticated one; it consisted of “Find Farringale and search it for clues.” So far, so good, but since answers had yet to leap out of the air to oblige us, what did we do next?

I looked long and hard down each street, noting that all three hosted buildings of promising-looking grandeur. ‘I wonder if any of those is the library?’ I mused aloud.

Alban had a piece of paper in his hand, to which he kept referring after every searching glance at the streets around us. I sidled closer.

It was a map, roughly hand-drawn in biro on basic, white A4 paper. But if I was disposed to dismiss its significance on account of its humble appearance, I was soon moved to reconsider, for Baron Alban’s thumb was positioned over the outline of an intersection just like the one we were standing on. One of its four converging streets outlined a smooth curve, from the other end of which branched a tiny side-street. Where this terminated, a blocky doorway was crudely drawn in. All of this looked… decidedly familiar.

‘My dear baron,’ I said. ‘Wherever did you get a map of Farringale?’

The look he shot at me could only be termed shifty. ‘The library is here,’ he said, and I could see him dodging my question but how could I care, when instead of an explanation he offered me a library? He was pointing one elegant finger at a hastily-drawn square on his map, which I was encouraged to note was not far away. Unfortunately, he did not excel at drawing. The library seemed to be positioned about equidistantly between two streets; which one actually hosted the door?

‘There are four of us,’ I observed. ‘Two to take the left fork, two to go straight ahead.’

‘Haven’t you ever played games?’ Jay said. ‘Never split the party.’

I looked around at the silent, empty city. ‘We don’t seem to be in any danger. Where’s the harm?’

‘Not yet,’ said Jay. ‘But something emptied this place, and if it is the same something that destroyed Glenfinnan and is presently decimating Darrowdale, I’d rather take a little care.’

‘I have to agree,’ murmured Alban.

I looked at Rob. I had invited him to be our Captain of Health and Safety, after all. On this point, his opinion mattered to me the most.

‘No need to rush, I think,’ he said.

Or in other words, no splitting the party. ‘Random pick, then,’ I said with a shrug. ‘We can double back if we get it wrong.’

We went left. The street narrowed there, and I was intrigued to notice a distinct change in its architectural character. The houses were smaller, and very differently built: most of them were timber-framed, with great, dark beams and white-washed walls. Some few farther along were made from brick, the deep-red, uneven kind: hand-crafted, and crumbling a little with age. They were human-sized and human-built, if I did not miss my guess, and dating from the sixteenth century. I’d seen many such buildings all over Britain.

‘They must have had a human population here, once,’ I said. ‘Look at this house! Tudor, has to be. Handsome, but not too grand: merchants? There was once a lot of trading back-and-forth between the Troll Enclaves and our own towns.’

I don’t think my fascination was fully shared by my companions. A medical treatise from the fifteen hundreds might have interested Rob, but a building? He cast it a polite glance, clearly did not see what had got me so excited, and found no comment to offer. Alban was focused on his map, and did not even look.

Jay, though… ‘It’s a shame all of that’s gone,’ he said, gazing at the merchant’s house with an air of faint wistfulness. ‘Can you imagine trying to get that kind of free trade and travel going nowadays?’

I could not. Magick used to be commonplace; it was widely used among humankind, and universally accepted even among those with no ability. That is no longer the case. It’s dwindling in humans, so much so that it now qualifies as a decided rarity. To those with no magickal talent, it simply does not exist. Our magickal communities have shrunk to mere pockets of activity, carefully hidden from the rest of the world. We survive, and we try to carry as much of that heritage forward as we can. But it isn’t easy, and for folk such as the trolls, it’s much harder to pass unnoticed.

Rob stopped, so suddenly that I almost collided with him. He stood tense, alert, his head lifted, scanning the sky.

‘What is it?’ I said.

He made no reply for a while, and finally shook his head. ‘Nothing, I think.’

But then I heard it, too: a swoosh of air from somewhere overhead, like the slow flapping of vast wings.

‘Hear that?’ said Rob, in a whisper.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘But I see nothing…’

‘That cloud,’ said Jay. ‘It’s… is that lightning?’

He was facing the other way, arm lifted to point. I spun around, stared hard at the hazy mass of clouds he indicated. Naught but serenity met my eyes, all golden peacefulness like a lazy summer afternoon…

…and then a ripple of searing golden light, there and gone so quickly I almost doubted the evidence of my eyes.

Wingbeats again, so close I almost felt the brush of feathers against my hair…

Rob backed up. ‘We might want to get out of the open air,’ he suggested.

‘You don’t think—’ began Jay.

‘He’s right,’ interrupted Alban. He was already making for the nearest building: that same Tudor townhouse I had been admiring only a moment before. He talked on as he walked. ‘There’s an old myth about Farringale Dell. There was once a mountain somewhere in there, so tall that its peak touched the clouds. And nesting thereupon were the kinds of creatures we do not want to tangle with, so, Ves? Jay? This way, and quickly.’

‘What kinds of creatures?’ said Jay, though he did not argue with the baron: he made for the mansion at a jog.

‘Big, winged ones,’ muttered Rob, who was retreating backwards, his gaze still locked on the sky.

As was mine, for erupting out of the clouds was a mass of big, winged creatures, all wreathed in crackling golden lightning. Big creatures. They were tawny in colour or white, their gigantic wings luxuriously feathered. They had the bodies of lions and long, sinuous tails…

‘Griffins,’ I breathed, torn between awe and fear. Because if we want to talk about rare magickal beasts, it doesn’t get much rarer or more magickal than the griffin. We’ve thought them extinct for years.

I had time only to register that my frozen-in-wonder awe was sadly misguided, for the nearest of the flock was bearing down upon me with alarming speed, and growing larger by the second… good heavens, how big were they?

‘Ves,’ shouted Rob. ‘These creatures are not friendly!’

He was right, for that marvellous bird’s beak opened wide and it shrieked at me, unmistakeably a challenge. An angry challenge. Its cloak of lightning crackled and blazed with heat, filling the air with the scent of ozone.

‘Shit,’ I observed, and threw myself to the ground. Wicked talons missed me by a hair; lightning flashed, searing my eyes, and my dress began to burn.

The griffin banked, turned, shrieked its fury anew. Then, with one powerful beat of its sail-like wings, it renewed its attack.

Turn page ->

Alban took the stallion, of course, it being the only beast large enough to bear the baron’s rather bulky frame. Twenty hands high if he was an inch, the stallion rippled with muscle, his hide almost as gleamingly bronze as the baron’s hair. They made a handsome pair.

My own unicorn was white, though her coat and horn glinted silvery in the right light. She and I made friends years ago, and we’ve been on several adventures together. The second time we met I gave her a name: Adeline. ‘Addie,’ I greeted her warmly, as she nosed and lipped at my cardigan. I gave her a kiss, and a ball of sugar. She dipped a bit to permit me to spring up onto her back; I took hold of the silver rope she wears which more or less keeps me from falling off, and we were ready to go.

Rob, too, was mounted up, sitting competently astride a night-black unicorn I felt a bit envious of. What a majestic creature she was! Her tapering horn was indigo traced with silver, her mane black glittering with stars. I had never seen her before; a new friend of Addie’s, obviously.

Jay, though, was in trouble. There was but one unicorn left for him to choose: a little mare of pale golden hide and rippling white tresses. She seemed friendly enough, but somehow they were not getting along. Jay stood several feet away from her, hands on hips, eyeing her with no friendly spirit, and the mare was dancing nervously from hoof to hoof.

‘Up, Jay!’ I called. ‘No time to waste!’

‘It may come as a surprise to you to learn that I have never ridden a unicorn.’

‘No problem. It’s much like riding a horse, only more… airborne.’

‘What makes you think I’m capable of riding a horse?’

That did surprise me a little. Who didn’t know how to ride a horse? But I suppose the arts of chair-riding, and related charmery, are more likely to appear on the university’s curriculums these days. Winged horses and unicorns, like so many other magickal beasts, are becoming scarce.

‘What do you think, Addie?’ I whispered to her, patting her silky neck. ‘Do you think you could carry two of us? We’re both skinny and on the short side, nothing too burdensome.’ That wasn’t an altogether fair way of describing Jay when he was almost six feet tall. Compared to the baron, though, he was a lightweight.

My darling Adeline indicated her approval by trotting over to Jay and halting right beside him. She lowered her graceful form to the ground, and waited patiently for him to notice her.

Which he did, though with almost as much delight as he had greeted the rest. ‘What’s this?’

I patted Addie’s back. ‘Join me, and the world will be ours.’

Jay raised his brows.

‘I’ll keep you from falling off,’ I translated. ‘Not that Addie would ever drop us.’

Jay was not impressed, but he did not argue. Within a few moments Addie had both of us astride her elegant back, Jay sitting behind me as stiff as a board.

‘Try to relax,’ I told him. ‘You only make it harder for yourself otherwise.’

He tried, with some success, but that was before Adeline rose to her feet again and began to walk. Jay clutched me so hard that it hurt, but I let it pass; he’d had a hard day already, and they don’t issue unicorns with seatbelts. No wonder he was uneasy.

‘Here we go,’ I murmured, as Addie began to trot, then to canter. She launched herself into a tearing gallop, her glittering wings spreading wide and beating with long, powerful strokes. Her hooves left the ground and we were away, spiralling up into the sunlit sky.

Jay wrapped his arms around my waist and buried his face in my shoulder. I suppose he didn’t want to see the view, which was a shame, because we flew higher and higher; so high, anybody who saw us from the ground would take us for a distant flock of birds. Old Winchester Hill dwindled to nothing beneath us, lost in the expanse of rolling, vibrant green countryside over which we flew.

‘Open your eyes!’ I called to Jay. ‘You have to see this!’

‘Gladly,’ said Jay. ‘As long as you’re okay with my vomiting all over your dress.’

‘On second thought, maybe stay as you are.’

‘That’s what I was thinking.’

I was glad of Jay’s warmth as we flew, for however glorious the April sunshine, the winds were cold so far above the ground. The journey was not long, for my unicorns were fast beyond belief; those glorious wings gobbled up the miles, green meadows sailing by below us as we flew. Nonetheless, by the time we spiralled down to the ground I was frozen stiff. I did not so much dismount as fall straight off Addie’s back, landing on my feet by happy fortune alone.

Jay walked about, waving feeling back into his arms and shaking himself. I expected him to look nauseated or petrified, but if anything he looked exhilarated.

‘Not so bad, eh?’ I said, smiling at him. ‘Air Unicorn, I mean.’

He grinned at that, taking me by surprise again. ‘Eight out of ten, would fly again.’

‘Eight?’

‘One point deducted for sub-optimal temperatures. One point for the screaming terror.’

‘Unfair. There was no screaming.’

‘In my head, I was screaming the whole time.’

‘I salute your courage,’ I told him, matching action to words.

He rolled his eyes and turned away from me, which was rather unfair considering I had been serious. But never mind. I certainly wasn’t going to admit that my knees were a bit weak, too; I’ve flown by unicorn a few times, but the combination of height and speed combined with the lack of safety features always takes a toll.

‘This is the right place,’ said Alban, striding up with his bronze stallion trailing behind him. ‘Near enough.’ The wind had done terrible things to my hair, I had no doubt, but the baron merely looked handsomely windswept. Some people spend a lot of quality time with a hairdryer trying to achieve that effect, and without much success.

We had come down in a field, just within sight of a pretty village — Alresford, presumably.  I was not worried about being spotted; Adeline is used to passing herself off as a swan, or a goose, or some other large bird, under the cursory glance of a non-magickal observer. Nonetheless, I judged it best to dismiss her and her little herd as soon as we were certain of no longer needing them.

‘Thank you,’ I whispered to Addie, kissing her soft nose, and she whickered at me before trotting off.

The closer we got to Farringale, the more Baron Alban’s urgency increased. He led us off towards the old town at a storming pace, and I had little time to admire the neat terraced houses with their bright paintwork, the tiny shops, or the delightful old timber-framed mill with its crown of thatch. Sun dappled the broad streets, the air was fresh and bright, and I wished we had gone there with a picnic or something, ready to enjoy the day. But Alban looked as grim as death, which was helpful in recalling my mind to our real purpose. We passed occasional strollers and shoppers as we tore through Alresford, but the baron attracted no real notice whatsoever; no doubt he was adept at concealing his unusually tall frame, unusual features and distinctive skin colour behind a glamour charm.

We stopped at last not far away from the lovely old mill. A sturdy bridge arched over the clear water of the River Alre, a blocky construct built from stone and brick. Clearly ancient, it must date, I guessed, from somewhere in the medieval period — a rare survival from such far-distant days. The bridge dwarfed the narrow waterway running beneath it; its pointed arch rose high enough for us to walk right underneath. We stopped on a little ledge next to the water, and looked expectantly at Alban.

‘Key?’ he said, looking at me.

I withdrew my beautiful key from my pocket. To my delight, the sapphire blazed when the light hit it; was it the sun that lit its internal fire, or proximity to the gate it was intended to open?

Baron Alban took two more keys out of his own pockets: one shining gold set with a ruby-red stone, the other glinting bronze and cradling a stone of vivid green, like emerald, or peridot. Both keys radiated coloured light, like mine, and I was moved to gratitude that we were, at least for the moment, alone at the bridge.

I thought Alban would know what to do with the keys, but he did not appear to. He stepped back a few paces and stared at the bridge, brow furrowed, clearly perplexed.

I could see why. There were no signs of anything like a keyhole anywhere upon that aged stonework. Not even one, let alone three. How were we supposed to open the gate?

‘May I borrow that?’ Alban said to me, indicating my key with a nod of his head.

Reluctantly, I handed it over.

‘Thanks.’ The baron held all three keys in one of his large hands and stepped into the water, heedless of the damage to his polished boots. He walked all the way under the arch, dipping down as the roof sloped lower. Nothing happened, save that he got rather wet. He turned about and made his way back to us, shaking his head.

‘I thought merely holding the keys might be enough, but no.’ He went back to searching the stonework for a clue, pacing back and forth impatiently.

‘There.’ Rob pointed a finger over the baron’s head, at the smooth stonework just above the bridge’s pointed arch.

I saw nothing. ‘What? What are we seeing?’

‘Wave those keys around a bit again, Baron,’ said Rob.

Alban complied, looking like he felt a bit foolish. But as he stretched up his arm and waved the keys back and forth, a faint, answering glitter of colour rippled over the stones.

‘Well spotted,’ commented the baron.

He was the only one of the four of us tall enough to do anything about this discovery, of course. This was troll country, all right. Alban laid each key in turn against the stones until something else happened: the gold key flashed red and sank into the stone, fitting into a perfectly-shaped depression we had not been able to see before. There it lay, twinkling jauntily red.

The baron had no trouble fitting the second key alongside it: within moments, the bronze key with its green jewel had taken up a neighbouring spot, and the two shone side-by-side like early Christmas lights.

Only one key, my key, was left, and its home was soon revealed by way of a sheen of blue lighting up the grey stone. But Alban hesitated.

‘Are we ready for this?’ he asked of us, looking over his shoulder and down at his audience of three.

‘Yes,’ said Rob. He looked prepared, his posture confident, his manner composed. But so he always did. I have never seen Rob at a loss, or afraid.

‘I am,’ said Jay, though he looked and sounded less certain than Rob.

‘Onward,’ I said, and tried to sound staunch and imperturbable. Was I ready? How could you be prepared for something you could not predict?

This was no time for doubts, for the baron nodded his acknowledgement of our enthusiasm and reached up to place the third key.

Rather a lot happened.

First, the light. If the keys had shone brightly before, now they fairly blazed, and a rainbow raced, swift and glittering, over the arch of the bridge.

The bridge shuddered under some force we could neither see nor feel, shedding earth and stone dust into the water. I winced, suddenly anxious, for the bridge was irreplaceable; what if the passage of centuries had weakened it? What if it was no longer capable of bearing the pressure of the Farringale enchantments, and collapsed? Milady would never forgive us. I would never forgive myself.

But it held. The shaking stopped, the rainbow of light faded, and all became still once more.

With one change. A serene white light shone from underneath the bridge, marking the outline of an arched portal. A breeze gusted forth from within, bringing with it the musty scent of lost ages.

The way into Farringale was open.

Turn page ->

The things I had in mind were not supplies, as the baron probably imagined. I still had my stash of toys from the Darrowdale expedition, and I keep a basic travel kit ready at all times because I am often sent off somewhere at a moment’s notice.

No, the “things” I planned to grab in passing consisted of just the one, really. A tall, reassuringly bulky, Rob-Foster-shaped thing, to be precise.

I like Rob so much. He is so calm, and so obliging. I found him in the infirmary tending to a forlorn-looking soul with her arm in a cast. Broken bones aren’t too uncommon around here, at least among those following certain fields of specialisation (mine included).

‘Much as I hate to disturb you,’ I said to Rob as I swept in, resembling, most likely, a small, vibrantly-coloured whirlwind, ‘I have an urgent matter on hand.’

Rob acknowledged my appearance but did not answer me until he had finished whatever he was doing for the girl — I call her such because she was very young, perhaps fifteen or so. She seemed a bit too young for a Society recruit, but perhaps she was here on some kind of internship or work experience thing. We sometimes get them.

Anyway, Rob dismissed her, all calm reassurance and comforting professionalism, and the girl — Indian, at a guess, and very smartly dressed — went away looking less forlorn.

‘All right, Ves,’ said Rob, taking off his doctor’s coat. ‘What may I do for you?’

‘Jay and I are going to Farringale,’ I told him.

‘Ah.’

Unflappable, Rob. ‘Nobody’s been there in centuries,’ I added.

‘Indeed.’

‘Since we have no idea what we might find there, and whether or not it will prove to be friendly, I’d like to take you along with us.’

Rob looked curiously at me. ‘What do you need me for?’

‘I’d like your help with not dying.’

He smiled faint amusement. ‘Playing the damsel? You could probably hold your own against pretty much anything, and Jay’s no slouch either.’

He wasn’t wrong — about me, at least; I had no real idea what Jay’s abilities might be. Anybody taking up my line of work with the Society is obliged to take a rigorous series of courses in what Milady, by way of adorable euphemism, terms “the Direct Arts”. And while I am no prodigy by any means, I can be plenty direct when I need to be. I’m still breathing, aren’t I? And believe me, Milady has thrown me at all manner of risky adventures down the years.

However.

‘It’s the “probably” part that bothers me,’ I answered. ‘And I’ll have Jay with me. He is something of a protege and I do not want to have to admit to Milady that I got him sliced up and made into mincemeat.’ Particularly when the mission was unauthorised in the first place.

‘I’m surprised Milady didn’t think of sending me along,’ said Rob, brows slightly raised in mild enquiry.

People are too sharp around here by half. ‘She doesn’t know we’re going,’ I told him. I mean, why bother lying? ‘Actually, she outright forbade it. But House disagrees, so we’re going anyway.’

Rob absorbed this in stoic silence, his gaze on me thoughtful. ‘All right,’ he said, to my relief. ‘You can explain the rest on the way.’

I gave him my best, absolutely my sunniest smile, and my most exquisite curtsey too. ‘You are a gentleman above any other, Mr. Foster.’

‘I know.’

It was only once we arrived at the conservatory that I realised I’d forgotten to mention Baron Alban to Rob. And I had, of course, neglected to mention Rob to Baron Alban. Oops.

The two gentleman took the surprise well, however, electing only to eye one another up in a manner assessing and wary but in no way hostile.

‘Our party’s expanding,’ noted the baron.

‘I like breathing,’ I told him. ‘And Rob’s the best we have at keeping all those kinds of procedures going. In numerous ways.’

Alban accepted this with a nod. Rob asked no questions at all, so I left the problem of explaining the Baron’s presence for later.

‘The key?’ prompted Alban.

I fished it out of my pocket and held it up. Rob stared at it with more interest than he had yet shown in anything, that I could remember, but he made no move either to touch it or to ask me about it.

Baron Alban, however, did both.

‘No,’ I said, snatching it out of his reach. ‘I will hang onto this one.’

Alban’s eyes narrowed. ‘I have the other two.’

‘Which you are welcome to keep. House gave this one into my care, however, and I promised to give it back.’

‘And so you shall, once we return.’

I shook my head, and tucked the key away again safely out of sight. ‘I live here, and I’d like to continue to do so for a while yet. Would you like to break a promise to a castle, voluntarily or otherwise?’

The twinkle returned to the baron’s eyes, and he made no further effort to persuade me. ‘Where did you find it?’

‘That’s a secret.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘You people eat, sleep and breathe secrets.’

‘Pot, meet kettle.’

‘Fair.’

Jay arrived just then, looking a little out of breath. I wondered what he had been doing with himself for the last quarter-hour. ‘The Waypoint’s ready,’ he said. He looked at the baron. ‘Where are we heading for?’

‘I’ll tell you when we get to the Waypoint.’

Jay shrugged and turned away. ‘Let’s go, then.’

A few minutes later we were back in that cold cellar room. It was even colder than last time, and I shivered. Did I imagine the faint, chill breeze coiling sluggishly over the stone floor?

Jay shepherded the three of us into the centre of the floor, right where the winds of travel had manifested last time. Then he looked questioningly at the baron.

‘Winchester,’ said Alban. ‘Or thereabouts.’

Winchester? As far as I had ever heard, scholars were agreed upon just one point regarding Farringale: it lay somewhere in the far north, either in England or in Scotland.

Winchester is in Hampshire. In fact, it is almost as far south as you can go before you hit saltwater. How could so many fine minds be so spectacularly wrong, and about so basic a fact?

Pot, meet kettle. Indeed. ‘Misdirection?’ I said to Baron Alban, failing to conceal my sourness.

He grinned at me. ‘Best way to keep a secret I know.’

‘You all have been mighty determined to keep this one.’

He shrugged. ‘Not my call, but I’m sure their Majesties have their reasons.’

‘They aren’t going to be pleased with you.’

‘About as pleased as Milady’s going to be with you, I imagine.’

There was time for no more words, for the breeze became a strong wind and then a howling gale, and then away we were once again.

Winchester made some sense, I thought, and it was a thought I clung to as I was whirled about, doll-like, in the winds of Jay’s magick on the way to Hampshire. After all, while ancient England cannot be said to have had a fixed capital in the modern way, Winchester was its principal city before London supplanted it. It did not surprise me greatly that the Troll Court should choose to anchor itself in the same environs as the monarchs of England, though that did not answer the question of why either party had chosen Winchester in the first place. What was it about the city? It was one of the very oldest settlements in England, true, but the same could be said for many another place.

Such reflections carried me through the worst of the journey, until I was at last set down — surprisingly gently — atop a wide, green hill in some pleasingly sun-dappled countryside. Vibrant meadowland stretched before me, dotted with yellow-flowering bushes and low, dark green shrubs. A brisk wind blew up on the heights there, which would have pleased me more if I had not just been subjected to rather an excess thereof.

I cast a quick glance at Baron Alban, who looked unaffected. Interesting. Did they have a Waymaster at the Troll Court? Most likely. He had the serene air of a man well used to travelling by high winds.

Rob, I knew, was considerably less accustomed to it, but he stood admiring the scenery with his customary stoicism, so I felt no concern for him.

Jay was another matter. I swiftly concluded that it must be much harder to convey four people to the other end of the country than it was to convey two, for he had collapsed into a boneless heap upon the grass and was performing a creditable impression of a dead person.

When a couple of minutes went by and Jay did not get up, Rob knelt beside him and subjected him to a cursory examination. ‘You all right, lad?’ he said quietly.

‘Be fine,’ Jay mumbled.

Rob did not argue with this announcement, but took a charm bead out of a pocket somewhere and put it between Jay’s lips. They tend to be colour-coded; this one was yellow, and as far as I could remember that meant it was a restorative.

A most effective one, for Jay was soon sitting up and then back on his feet, shaking himself like a dog and breathing great gulps of air. ‘Ouch,’ he croaked after a while.

Rob clapped him on the shoulder. ‘How long have you been using the Ways?’

‘About five minutes, as these things go.’

‘You did well.’

Jay said nothing in reply, but he accepted the praise with an air of quiet gratitude of which I took careful note. It hadn’t occurred to me that he might lack confidence, or that a simple compliment would go such a long way.

‘To Winchester, then?’ said Jay, looking at Baron Alban.

‘Actually, to Alresford.’

That won him a blank look. ‘Where?’

‘It is a tiny old town a ways north-east of Winchester.’

Jay tapped away at his phone for a minute. ‘Ten miles away,’ he said lightly. ‘Or a bit more. No problem, we’ll be there by nightfall.’

‘We should have brought some chairs,’ said Rob.

Jay had the look of a man just barely resisting the temptation to roll his eyes. I didn’t blame him. Four chairs, large enough to fly in without falling overboard, would not be easily portable. He set off down the hill, moving at a brisk march. ‘Better get going,’ he called back.

‘Wait, I have a better idea.’ It was me who spoke, and by way of response I received from all three gentlemen an identical quizzical look. ‘I have, um, a small secret,’ I ventured.

‘Really.’ Jay’s voice dripped sarcasm.

Baron Alban merely raised a brow at me that said: Is that supposed to be a surprise?

I did not try to explain, which might have been a mistake, since my next move was to stick my hand down the front of my dress and start rooting about in there.

‘Um, Ves…?’ said Jay.

‘Hang on.’ Almost… ah, there they were. I withdrew my hand, bringing forth a set of tiny silver pipes.

Jay’s confusion only grew. ‘Panpipes?’

‘Syrinx pipes,’ I corrected. The baron knew what they were, for his grin flashed bright and he chuckled.

I blew a trilling melody upon my beautiful pipes and in response, a breeze swirled through my hair. Not a frantic, grabbing breeze like the Winds of the Ways, but a gentle wind, warm and serene and scented with flowers.

I shoved the pipes away again and faced the horizon. ‘Any moment now.’

‘Should I ask why you keep charmed syrinx pipes in your undergarments?’ Jay said, apparently more intrigued by that question than whatever might come of my music.

‘They’re safe in there,’ I murmured, not paying him much attention.

If he made any response, I missed it, for there in the sky was a pinprick of colour, growing rapidly larger and more distinct. Three others formed around it. They flew fast, feathered pinions spread wide to ride the winds, and soon they were swooping in to land upon the hilltop nearby.

‘Unicorns?’ said Jay, incredulous. ‘You just whistled a quartet of winged unicorns out of your bra?’

‘Never underestimate the benefits of a good bra,’ I told him with dignity. ‘As many a lingerie company will tell you.’

Jay, for once, had nothing to say.

Turn page ->

‘Dear House,’ I said. Only as I spoke those words did it strike me as odd that the house had no other name. Such grand places always have spectacular names of course — think of Chatsworth, or Castle Howard, or Buckingham Palace. Iconic buildings, memorable names. Why was this one so different? Had it ever been named, at all? If not, why not?

I had never heard of its ever being called anything but “House”, or “Home”, or something along those lines. It had never felt strange to call it such before. But now I was addressing the building directly, and it felt as strange to call it “House” as it would be to address a friend as “Person”, or perhaps “Human”.

‘Dear House,’ I said again, trying to sound less doubtful about it. ‘I… need your help.’

I paused — to collect my thoughts, and to give House an opportunity to turf me out, if it wanted to. I mean, if it was going to be totally uninterested in rendering me any assistance at all, better to know that right away and save both of us the time.

But nothing happened, so I went on. ‘There is a problem with the trolls, you see. They are sick, dying. We’re going to lose a few of their Enclaves altogether if we don’t figure out why, and who knows where it will end? Perhaps they will all go. Something has to be done, but nobody knows where to start.

‘We think it might have something to do with Farringale. Baron Alban and I, that is — do you know him? He is the Troll Court’s ambassador to the Hidden Ministry, and he knows things about the Old Court, even if he won’t confide in me. We want to go to Farringale, so we can try to find out what destroyed it. If it’s the same thing that’s wiping out Glenfinnan and Darrowdale and Baile Monaidh, well, maybe we will be able to do something about it. Before any more are lost.’

I took a deep breath, encouraged by the continued lack of dire consequences to my narration. ‘You’ve probably guessed why I’m here by now. Alban has two of the keys, but we cannot go without the third. I… may as well own that Milady forbids the venture entirely. I don’t really blame her, either. If Farringale was half as vast and splendid as the legends say, then whatever destroyed it was probably not something we want to poke with a stick. But I think we have to try.

‘Val thought you might help me, and… I am hoping she is right. Do you have the third key? Will you lend it to me? I promise to bring it back.’ An unpleasant thought entered my head and I felt obliged to add, in a lower tone, ‘Assuming I get out of Farringale alive.’

Silence. Seconds passed, then minutes, and I heard no sound but the gentle ticking of the grandfather clock; saw nothing move, save the clock’s swaying pendulum.

Was that a refusal? Was the House even listening to me? I didn’t know, couldn’t tell. All I could do was wait, which I did with increasing impatience and dismay as minute after minute passed and the chocolate went cold in the pot.

Five minutes. Seven. Ten.

Fifteen.

How was I going to explain to Baron Alban that I had failed? He had asked me specifically, with a flattering confidence in my ability to deliver. I did not want to disappoint him. And if we could not get into Farringale, how else were we to save the Enclaves? What else could we do?

Twenty minutes, and no sign of a response. Either House had not heard me at all, or it had chosen to side with Milady. ‘Very well, then,’ I said. ‘Thank you for listening to me. And for letting me see your favourite room.’ I took a last look around, for the chances were that I would never see it again.

The clock ticked on.

I hauled myself out of the chair — really, they were surprisingly comfortable, for all their formal magnificence — and shook out my hair.

Something fell from my lap with a clink.

Ohgod. Was it my cup? Had I left that dainty and probably priceless antique upon my knee? But no; there had been no shatter, no crash of porcelain breaking into pieces.

A key lay upon the floor, not three inches from my left foot. It was a large, handsome, silver-wrought thing, intricately engraved, and it bore a blue jewel that glittered with its own light.

‘Oh.’ I bent to pick it up, carefully, as though it might be fragile. But it was heavy in my grasp, sturdy, and faintly warm to the touch. That jewel shone when my fingers touched it, mesmerising.

‘Thank you,’ I whispered. This was no small thing. House was trusting my judgement over Milady’s — mine and Alban’s. ‘We won’t fail,’ I said, so rashly, for I had no idea what we might find in Farringale; how could I be sure that we would not?

My show of confidence pleased the House, though, for a ripple of warm air shivered over my skin like a balmy summer breeze, and the key glimmered on in my hand.

‘Onward, then,’ said I, and left the parlour. When I stepped over the threshold of the door, I found myself back in the first floor common room.

And there was Jay, lounging in an arm chair not three feet away and looking at me like I had just grown a second head. ‘Where did you spring from?’

I glanced about, confused. ‘I came in through a door… oh.’ The door was on the other side of the room, and I was nowhere near a window.

‘You walked out of a wall,’ said Jay.

‘Doesn’t seem unlikely.’  Happily, nobody else was around to witness my involuntary feat of defiance of all known laws of nature, if not Magick; the common room was empty besides him. I wandered over to my favourite chair — the wing-back one with the red upholstery — and flopped down into it with a spectacular lack of grace. I was feeling a bit weak at the knees, which was probably a sign of incipient panic. What did I think I was doing, proposing to waltz into Farringale? A place nobody had set foot inside in centuries, which had collapsed due to reasons unknown but undoubtedly dire? I was mad. Baron Alban was mad.

And the next thing I had to do was convince Jay to get us there, the same Jay who was scowling at me with that fierce frown of his.

‘Are you okay?’ he said abruptly.

‘What?’

‘Are you all right? You look a little pale.’

‘I am always a little pale.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Paler than usual. You look like a bowl of yoghurt.’

‘I’m fine.’ The question discomfited me, because it was unexpected. From his face, I’d assumed he was displeased with me for some reason. Instead, he had shown concern.

It did make it harder to proceed to knowingly pissing him off.

Oh well. Delaying unpleasant duties never made them any easier to perform. ‘Jay, I need your help with something.’

He sat up a bit, and focused a more alert gaze upon me. ‘That is why I am here.’

‘It isn’t exactly why you— oh, never mind. I need to go somewhere quickly, together with… someone else.’

‘Someone who else?’

‘Baron Alban.’

He nodded, unconcerned. So far, so good. ‘Where are we going?’

‘I don’t… know, exactly, but Alban does.’

The frown reappeared. ‘We are following the intriguing baron into parts wholly unknown? Are we trusting him enough for that? He’s a total stranger.’

‘It isn’t… entirely unknown. I know where we are aiming for, I just don’t know where it is.’

‘Enough mystery, Ves. What’s going on?’

So much for breaking it to him gently. ‘We are going to Farringale.’

‘Farri— the Troll Court? The lost one? Seriously?’

‘That’s the plan.’

He stared at me.

I stared back.

If I had harboured any hopes that he might assume Milady had given the order, those hopes were swiftly dashed. ‘Why,’ said he with detestable and inconvenient astuteness, ‘is it you asking me about this? Why aren’t we up in the tower hearing all about it from Milady, together?’

‘Because she said no.’ Screw trying to be subtle, if he was going to be so bloody clever.

‘Then we aren’t going.’ Jay said this with aggravating serenity, picked up the book he’d been reading when I came in, and to all appearances forgot my existence altogether.

‘We are. Look.’ I fished the key out of the pocket I’d hastily stuffed it into, and held it up. The blue jewel blazed, which made for quite the impressive effect.

Jay didn’t even look up.

‘Jay. Look at this thing!’

He raised his head, and subjected the glittering key to a dull, uninterested stare. ‘What of it?’

‘It’s the key to Farringale. The third key, of three. House gave it to me.’

‘The House gave it to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘This House?’

‘Yes.’

And I’d got him, I could see that. He still did not like the idea, but he was listening to me. ‘Why would House give you that key if Milady said no?’

‘Apparently it isn’t up to Milady to decide about the key.’

Jay put away the book. ‘All right. Why did Milady say no, if House is in favour?’

‘She thinks it’s too dangerous to open Farringale.’

‘She could well be right.’

‘She might be, but so what? How else are we going to help the Enclaves? Do you have a better idea?’

‘There are probably hundreds of other ways we could find out what’s going on with those Enclaves.’

‘Probably. Name one.’

He opened his mouth, hesitated. ‘The… the library probably has some relevant materials somewhere, or some other library.’

‘That could take forever to dig up.’

‘There are teams at Darrowdale and South Moors right now, looking for a source of the trouble—’

‘Which they apparently aren’t finding in a hurry, as we’ve heard nothing. And this is urgent, Jay.’

‘I am not sure why you expect to walk into Farringale and have the answer handed to you on a plate.’

‘I don’t, but we might. How do you know?’

‘You could die. We could die.’

‘Maybe. Maybe not. Meanwhile, a lot of trolls are dying.’

Jay began to look a little desperate. ‘Ves… you might be able to openly disobey Milady, but I can’t. You’ve a ten-year history with the Society, a blazing track record. However angry Milady might be with you, the chances of her chucking you out are practically zero. But me? I’ve only just got here!’

‘You’re a Waymaster, the only one we’ve managed to get hold of in about a decade. She won’t discard you lightly.’

‘It would be neither wise nor classy to presume upon that.’

‘House is in favour!’

‘Which is useful to know, but House doesn’t pay my salary, and House isn’t going to be writing me a reference if I have to go looking for a new job.’

‘You’re a Waymaster, you don’t need a reference. You could walk into a new job this afternoon.’

‘It’s about professional standards, pride—’

‘Jay, the important thing here is to get the job done. And the job is to preserve. The Enclaves are folding around us and nobody knows how to stop it. This is the best way I can think of to find out why — the best, the most direct, hopefully the fastest. Can you think of a better one? Really?’

Jay sighed, long and deeply, and shook his head. ‘Nope.’

‘Right.’

‘Right. So.’ He scowled at me and chucked his book at my head. ‘Damn you and your rule-breaking ways. You’ll make a disgrace of me.’

‘Or a hero.’

‘Or a hero.’ He stood up, stretched, shook himself, as if to shake away his doubts. ‘Since this is all kinds of urgent, I imagine you want to get going. Where’s Alban?’

‘I’ll find out.’ I took out my phone and called the baron’s number. His reply was immediate.

‘Ves? Did you get the key?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is Jay with us?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then we go. Meet me in the conservatory in five minutes.’

‘Ten,’ I countered. ‘We need to grab a few things first.’

‘Ten it is.’

Turn page ->

‘So you need this key.’ Valerie tapped a pen thoughtfully against her lips, a characteristic gesture. I said nothing, letting her think in peace. I have great confidence in Val. She always comes up with something. ‘I wonder why Milady has custody of it,’ she said at length.

A good question, one I had not really considered. ‘The Society’s entire existence is about protecting rare old stuff, isn’t it?’

‘Might be reason enough.’ She thought some more, her eyes straying to the books on the far shelves. ‘The House predates Milady by quite a margin, of course. I wonder why Alban is so certain Milady is keeping the key.’

A faint suspicion entered my head. ‘Predates? By how far?’

She nodded, following my train of thought perfectly — or perhaps I was following hers. ‘The House’s precise date of construction is not known for some reason, but a few particular architectural features have led me to conclude that it was built somewhere around the early 1660s. Give or take a few years.’

‘And the decline of Farringale took place in 1657! Or so Milady said.’

Val’s eyes narrowed. ‘That was unusually forthcoming of her.’

‘Wasn’t it? I have no idea what came over her.’

‘It makes sense that those three keys were hidden away sometime fairly soon after the close of the Enclave, which was probably somewhere in the 1660s. Is Milady personally keeping the third key, or was it given to the House?’

‘Given… to the House?’ I was sceptical, I couldn’t help it. ‘Come on, Val. I know it’s an odd House and rather more aware than most Houses are, but still. It doesn’t have a mind, exactly, or a consciousness the way we do—’

‘Doesn’t it?’

It might have been a coincidence, but something creaked in the library just then. I don’t mind admitting that it gave me the chills. ‘All right,’ I said, prepared to accept the possibility, for what was ever normal about the Society? ‘But if House has got it, that’s a problem. If I couldn’t persuade Milady to let me have it, I… have no idea how to convince a seventeenth-century country mansion.’

Valerie smiled. ‘House can be very helpful, if it likes you.’

I cast a slightly trepid glance at the stately shelves nearby, and the graceful ceiling arching far overhead. ‘How do I know if it likes me?’ I whispered.

‘I wouldn’t worry, Ves. You are very likeable.’

‘That’s comforting.’

She sat back, eyeing me speculatively. ‘I will tell you a secret about the House. Maybe it will help.’

I blinked. ‘Wait. There are secrets about the House that you haven’t told me?’

‘Yes, but we can wrangle about that later. Is this urgent or not?’

‘Sorry.’

Out came the secret. ‘House has a favourite room. Few have seen it, for it is so well hidden, you really have to know that it’s there in order to find it at all. And I don’t think House likes visitors in there too often, so it doesn’t exactly help you out if you go looking for it. But it’s there, somewhere near the heart of the building. A sitting room, prettily decorated, and as far as I can tell it’s unchanged since the sixteen hundreds. I believe it most likely belonged to whoever built this House, and House keeps it just the way it is.’

‘Fantastic,’ I breathed. ‘So you’ve been inside it?’

‘Twice.’ She did not elaborate, and I didn’t push. ‘Anyway, if you go there, I think House might listen to you. And if it does… well, House and Milady are usually in accord with one another, but it wouldn’t be the first time they have disagreed.’

‘Dear Val, you are a jewel in the Society’s crown.’

She smirked. ‘I know. Got some paper? The directions are a little convoluted, you’ll want them written down.’

She wasn’t kidding. I left the library a few minutes later with a sheet of notepaper in my hand, both sides of it mostly covered in Val’s flowing handwriting. According to the directions, there were at least three times as many staircases at Home than I had ever seen or imagined, and far more corridors than the place should reasonably have room for. Not that this should have surprised me either. I had more than once suspected that the House was somewhat larger on the inside than its exterior would lead a person to expect.

Val’s route started, helpfully, from the library, but I soon began to feel that I was lost. I trotted along several winding corridors, up a few twisting staircases and down several more. At first I knew exactly where I was, but after a while I realised I recognised nothing that I saw around me. When I opened an occasional door to take a peek inside, I saw rooms I had never seen before either.

This frankly flabbergasted me. I had lived for more than a decade in that House, and I’d been comfortable that I knew it inside out. How could so much of it have been hidden from me all that time? And what else was there that I still did not know about?

It grew quieter as I walked, a clear sign that I was travelling farther and farther away from the House’s centres of activity. There was a stillness to the air that made me feel very alone, and my footsteps rang out, crisp and sharp, echoing off the aged stonework.

And then the corridor ended. I turned a corner and saw before me nothing but uninterrupted stone walls and a clean stone floor — curiously free of dust and debris, for all its remote atmosphere. There were no windows, no doors, no stairs; no way out at all, except back the way I had come.

I consulted Val’s directions again, to no particular avail. Honestly, the sense of giving a woman like me so complex a list of directions and expecting me to traverse them without getting lost! For an instant I suspected Val of playing a trick on me, but dismissed the idea. She would not. Her faith in my ability to find my way through this maze of a castle must be rather higher than my own.

Turn left, said the last of Val’s notes, which I had just done. Turn left… and then what? I considered calling her to ask, but dismissed that idea, too. She hates to have ringing phones around when she’s reading, and would undoubtedly have switched hers off.

I felt my way along the walls for a while, checking for hidden doors, stones that might obligingly slide aside to reveal secret staircases, that kind of thing. No luck there either.

I chose a corner at the end of the corridor and sat down with my back against the stone wall, surveying the empty passageway before me with some dismay. How could I be so inept? The answer was probably obvious, so obvious that it had not occurred to Val that I might need help. Jay would have got it in an instant, and treated my confusion with that faint but distinct disbelief I have sometimes detected in his eyes. I could have called him, but my pride revolted against that idea.

‘Well, House,’ I said aloud as I hauled myself back to my feet. ‘Your secrets are safe from me.’ I walked back along that puzzling corridor and turned right, following Valerie’s directions backwards.

Memory is a strange thing, is it not? I remember names, dates, faces and all manner of minute details with the greatest of ease, but I am not so well able to recognise places I have already been. So it took me much longer than it should have to realise that the passageway I was walking down was not the same one I had traversed perhaps half an hour before. The great stone blocks that made up the walls were limestone of a slightly different shade, and cut a little on the smaller side. The air smelled faintly of chocolate, which I had not noticed before. When I passed a gilt-framed painting of an eighteenth-century landscape I did not remember seeing before, I was certain I had gone wrong.

My stomach fluttered with nerves at finding myself so much at a loss, for I had clearly strayed from Val’s directions and had no idea where I was. If I became hopelessly turned about in House’s twisting corridors, would it consent to rescue me? I could be lost for hours. Days.

But then there was a door. It obtruded itself upon my notice so suddenly as to arouse my suspicions. Had it been there a moment before? Was I so oblivious as to have missed it? It looked innocuous enough: an ordinary-sized door painted bright white, with a single, large pewter knob set into the centre.

‘All right, then,’ I muttered, game to try anything that might get me out of that mess of a maze. I grasped the knob, finding it strangely warm under my hand, and turned it.

And there it was: House’s favourite room. It could only be that, for before me lay a perfectly preserved parlour whose fittings and furniture clearly proclaimed its provenance. The wallpaper was prettily figured with scrolling flowers, all rosy and lavender and ivory in hue; three elegantly-curved seventeenth-century chairs had been upholstered to match, in handsome ivory silk; portraits in oval frames hung upon the walls, and an exquisite old grandfather clock occupied one corner. It was still ticking, its pendulum keeping time with a drowsy, soothing sway.

A little white tea table stood in the centre, atop which sat a silver chocolate pot not wholly unlike Milady’s. A puff of steam drifted from its spout as I stepped over the threshold, and a cup appeared beside it.

‘Is that for me?’ I said.

The pot puffed steam again, which seemed a clear enough response. So I settled into the nearest chair — carefully, carefully; one is used to treating antique furniture with great care. But these chairs, while they had obviously been much used and loved, displayed none of the frailty or decay they ought to have accumulated over the better part of four hundred years.

I took a moment to examine the portraits, idly curious as to whether I might recognise any of the faces depicted therein. I did not. They were ladies and gentlemen for the most part, sumptuously garbed in the silk and lace gowns, the elaborately curled wigs, the velvet coats and jewelled extravagance of the sixteen hundreds. There were one or two exceptions, however. I saw a young, dark-skinned man clad in much simpler garb, his expression earnest and intense. On the other side of the room, a little girl in a plain dress played with a doll; next to her portrait hung that of an elderly woman wearing an eighteen-thirties day dress and a wide straw bonnet, smiling in the sunlight of a bright spring day.

‘Dear House,’ I began, setting down my empty cup. ‘Thank you for the chocolate, you are always such a gent. Or a lady, it’s… hard to tell. I have come to entreat your help. May we talk?’

It felt odd, sitting alone in that eerie little parlour out of time, literally talking to the walls. But a faint creak of assent answered my question to the apparently empty air — or at least, I took it as assenting. Nothing leapt out to cut me off, or to hustle me out of the room again. And so I began.

Turn page ->

‘Farringale,’ I repeated.

‘Yes,’ said Baron Alban.

‘Mythical, mysteriously abandoned, long-lost seat of the Troll Court for hundreds of years Farringale?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘The unfindable version, or is there some other Farringale that’s still marked on a map somewhere?’

‘Why don’t you let me worry about how to find it, while you worry about how to get in?’

‘All right. Be right back.’ I slid past him and made for the door.

‘Uh, Ves?’ he called. ‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to ask Milady.’

‘What? Why! She will only say no.’

‘You don’t know that for sure.’

‘No,’ said Milady.

I’d given it my best shot, honest. I had begun with a polite enquiry after her health, paired with my usual curtsey, and opened the discussion with: ‘It emerges that our excellent Baron Ambassador suspects a close connection between the afflicted Enclaves and Farr—’

‘No,’ said Milady.

‘—Farringale, and seeks an opportunity to investigate the precise causes of its demise in a more direct fashion—’

‘No.’

‘—in hopes of uncovering some new, hitherto unsuspected information which might enable us to save Baile Monaidh and Darrowdale and—’

‘No.’

‘—any others that might come under similar afflictions in the future, or even to—’

‘No!’

‘—to learn enough to avert such calamities from ever occurring again at all. ‘

‘Vesper! I do not know how many times you require me to repeat the same word before you find yourself able to comprehend it.’

‘But why! The Baron’s theory is sound and his cause is more than just—’

‘The reasons he saw fit to present to you, and to me, are just, but I suspect the Baron of harbouring a few other ideas.’

‘If he draws some other benefit out of the venture while also resolving an emergency which threatens the life of many of his people, I see no cause for complaint.’

‘His theory might be sound, or it might be hogwash. There are reasons aplenty to avoid Farringale. Why do you think it was closed in the first place?’

‘If it is sound, much may be accomplished. If it is not, we will have learned something.’

‘And the risks?’

‘Baron Alban is prepared to face them, and he has already secured two keys—’

‘The keepers of those keys cannot have been any more delighted with this plan than I am, so I am moved to question just by what means his lordship secured them.’

‘That is his own affair. I did not ask.’

Milady sighed, its manifestation a soft puff of glittering light. ‘Vesper. I understand your point of view, truly, and I applaud your passion. But consider. The risks involved in opening Farringale are not necessarily limited to those holding the keys. We do not know what may come forth, were those doors opened, and therefore we cannot consider ourselves prepared to deal with the consequences.’

‘The only way to learn something is to ask! To explore, to find out! No secret ever did anybody any good for long.’

‘Vesper.’ Milady’s tone turned less strident, more… resigned. Wearily so. ‘I cannot permit this.’

‘I can only continue to fervently disagree with that decision.’

‘You are one of my very best, and you know it. But I hope you understand that your job will be in some considerable danger, should you choose to disobey me in this.’

‘I understand.’

‘Very good. Please accept my regrets, Ves.’

I did, of course, with the utmost politeness. But while I understood Milady’s position well enough, I do not think she understood that keeping my job was not my primary priority. Oh, I would be devastated if she carried through her threat, and ejected me from the Society. It has been my home and my world for so long, I cannot imagine my life without it. But it is a job with a purpose. The work that I do matters. I am here because I want to save our beautiful magickal beasts, our wondrous books and charms and artefacts and Curiosities and plants and Dells and all the rest. And yes, if I get the chance, that absolutely includes the Troll Enclaves, whether they fall strictly under my purview or not.

If I lost my job, I could get another. But if we lost half our Enclaves? How could that ever be justified?

So I set forth to disobey Milady, heavy of heart but firm of purpose. And if, lurking behind all those noble ideals, there was another reason — namely, that I simply cannot resist an ancient mystery — well, nobody needed to know about that but me.

‘The problem,’ I said, having rejoined Baron Alban and borne his inevitable I-told-you-so, ‘is that I have not the first idea where to look for the key. I do hope you have furnished yourself with something along the lines of a clue.’

‘None whatsoever,’ he said. ‘But I can assure you that it will be virtually unreachable, and secreted somewhere with fiendishly excellent security.’

‘How very encouraging you are.’

He bowed. ‘Honesty is my policy. Be careful, Ves. I would not make such a request of you, were it not—’

‘Urgent. Yes, yes, I know.’

‘I have given you a way to reach me,’ he said, and when I took out my phone I found a text from an unknown number saying: ‘Tally ho!’

‘Do you take anything seriously?’ I said.

‘I’m taking this problem seriously. Just not all the way seriously, all the time.’

‘Where would be the fun in that,’ I agreed.

The baron gave me a swift grin, and tipped an imaginary hat. ‘Good luck, Ves. Text me when you’ve got it.’

With which buoying words he was gone, leaving me with a big problem and a dearth of possible solutions.

Trying to second-guess Milady is… not the easiest task I have ever been given. I mean, where to begin? If I was a disembodied voice with a penchant for tower-tops and chocolate pots, where would I hide the key to a lost Enclave? Absolutely no idea.

I thought about all the obvious places, and dismissed them as too obvious. The tower? On the one hand, at least she could keep an eye on it up there. No one was likely to be pilfering it out from under her very eyes. But it did not strike me as likely, because whenever any of us thinks of Milady, we think of the tower. It is the first place any of us would choose to look for something Milady had hidden, and therefore, I had to cross it off the list. She was too subtle for that.

Stores? That made a lot more sense to me, and I considered it an attractive possibility for a while. Where better to hide something like that than in plain sight, so to speak? Buried under so much other, random paraphernalia that nobody would ever realise its importance? Maybe. But this, too, occurred to me too early and too easily, so I had to discount it. Anything that seemed very likely probably wasn’t.

I thought about the Enchanting labs for similar reasons. They spend all day tinkering with various charms and imbuing them into various objects, so those labs are always littered with stuff — keys included. But that struck me as too random. Such a key could get lost in there, or worse yet, its operating charm overwritten with something else entirely. Milady wouldn’t be that careless.

And so I went on, eliminating every idea I came up with as too obvious, too unlikely, or too risky, until I had nothing left.

I toyed briefly with the idea of asking Jay. I’m not sure why, only that he was bright-minded and obviously saw the world very differently from me. He would probably see some possibility that would never have occurred to me. But I kept coming back to the unavoidable fact that he would heartily disapprove of the whole venture, so I stayed away from him.

In the end, devoid of further ideas, I went to see Valerie.

Valerie Greene has a job I rather envy. She’s Queen of the Library, Head of History, Boss of all Secrets, and it is her official duty to uncover exactly the kinds of ancient mysteries that I cannot resist. I applied to join the Library Division when I arrived at the Society, but Milady said my varied talents rendered me better suited to my current, rather more eclectic role, and I cannot say that she was wrong there.

Nonetheless, when I walk into the grand library at Home and see Valerie at the main desk there, absorbed in some promisingly huge and dusty tome and with her name engraved upon a shiny brass plaque, I always suffer a mild stab of regret. It is one of those libraries that dreams are made of: all soaring ceilings and shelves by the thousand, everything all ancient oak wood and leather-bound tomes. It smells like knowledge and mystery and time, and when I went in that day I paused to take a great lungful of that familiar aroma, as I always do.

Valerie looked up from her book. ‘Morning, Ves.’ She had a smile for me, as usual. She is one of the few people at Home that I would call a close friend; we’ve both been here for years, and have spent many hours chattering about books and speculating as to the truth behind some mystery or another. She and I are roughly the same age, she being the elder by only a few years. She has a neatness and a chic style about her that I have never been able to match, her dark hair and skin always perfectly complemented by her ensemble. She favours the swept-up look by way of hairstyle, which is practical; when I read, my hair is always falling all over the pages. You would think I would learn.

‘Val.’ I sidled up to the desk — a mildly undignified form of movement it may be, but it cannot be helped; sidling is exactly what I did — and sat down across from her. ‘I need to ask you something.’

‘Is this going to be one of those juicy requests?’

‘It is the questionable kind. Is that juicy enough?’

‘Plenty.’ She closed her book with great care and set it aside, laying it atop a soft, protective cushion. ‘What are we digging up today?’

I grinned. Val knows me far too well. ‘A key,’ I said. ‘Actually, before we get to the sticky part, let’s begin with Farringale. What do you know of it?’

That word definitely got her attention. ‘Farringale? Much the same things everybody knows about it, I imagine. Seat of Their Gracious Majesties, the kings and queens of the Troll Court since time immemorial, up until a few centuries ago. Its last known rulers were Hrruna the Third and Torvaston the Second, whose reign ended somewhere in the mid sixteen hundreds but who knows when exactly, because it—’

‘—inexplicably faded out of all knowledge. Exactly. That’s the part that I’m interested in.’

Valerie folded her arms and gave me the narrow-eyed look. ‘Theories abound as to why, as I am sure you know, because you have read every book we own about Farringale from cover to cover. So why are you asking me?’

‘I might be under the impression that you know something that isn’t in any of those books.’

‘I wish I did, but no. The current Court keeps that place shrouded in the kind of secrecy that can only be termed impenetrable.’

I nodded, more impressed than I cared to show. Valerie is tenacious with this kind of thing, even more so than I am, and she has the stature and credentials to make legitimate requests for that level of information. If even she couldn’t get past the Troll Court, they were really serious about keeping it under wraps.

‘Somebody at the Court disagrees,’ I said, and I told her about Baron Alban and his proposition. Her eyes grew rather wide as I hurried through my tale, and when I had finished she said: ‘Ves, I don’t know whether you should… are you sure about this?’

‘Of course I’m sure,’ I replied, all incredulity.

And then came the grin I had expected. ‘Of course you are. As if I would make any other decision in your shoes.’

‘I wouldn’t suspect you of it for an instant.’

Turn page ->

And there he was, in all his gorgeous glory. He had chosen a red leather duster coat that day, worn with dark combat trousers, boots to match, and an ivory shirt. No hat; instead, his golden-bronze locks had been brushed into an attractively wind-swept arrangement, and a jewelled pin winked at this throat.

I was suddenly wide awake.

‘Hello, the Baron,’ I said lightly, wishing I had taken a minute or two longer over my hair before I’d come downstairs. It probably resembled a hedge more nearly than I would like.

The Baron, though, did not seem displeased, for he looked me over with a twinkle and a smile, and made me a bow. ‘It is early. I apologise.’

‘The pot would like to offer you some tea,’ I observed, for the delicate glass teapot I favoured was bobbing lightly up and down, its spout emitting enthusiastic puffs of steam.

‘Thank you, pot. I shall be delighted.’ He took a seat, and his cup shortly after, and sat looking thoughtfully at me. ‘How are you getting along with the matter of the Enclaves?’ he said.

I sat up a little more. ‘Well, I have a theory, though it has some holes in it. But maybe you can help fill them in.’

He smiled faintly. ‘Perhaps I might.’

‘I think there is some kind of wasting sickness. They eat and eat and still starve; clearly they are ill. But there has to be more to it than that, because there are too many questions. It seems to be affecting only trolls, but why only a few of the Enclaves? And there is no discernible link between those communities that are sick. They are situated far apart from one another, so how is the disease spreading? And they aren’t just starving, they are… it’s almost like their minds are starving, too. They have no energy for anything but eating, and barely that. They don’t speak; it’s as if they have forgotten how to form words, or simply lack the energy or the will to make the effort.’

‘All good points.’

‘And they are eating magickal creatures, almost exclusively. Why? That suggests it is about something more than mere physical sustenance. Any kind of food would suffice there, but they are going for meat, and the meat of magickal beasts in particular. What’s that about?’

Alban’s green, green eyes twinkled with amusement. ‘So many questions. You have some theories to advance, too?’

‘Of course I do. But I did not share them with Milady, yet, for I have no evidence.’

‘Let’s hear them.’

‘Right.’ I set down my empty tea cup. ‘The disease spreads, but if it were contagious in any conventional way, surely we would be seeing either a wider problem — or a more confined one. Some of the affected Enclaves have been at least partially Reclusive for years, with little or no traffic going in or out of their towns. How did they catch it? And since they did, why hasn’t it spread farther? I don’t think it is a contagion.

‘Meanwhile, their desperate need to eat, eat and eat is telling, but the fact that they are starving anyway tells me that whatever they are feeding, it isn’t themselves. I think there is some kind of infecting body — a parasite, if you will. And it is taking so much from each host that it’s killing them. But it does not need meat to survive.

‘We know that many magickal beings feed as much off magickal energies as from more conventional foods. Trolls are an example. You need meat, grain, vegetables to survive, but you need a replenishing diet of magickal energies in order to flourish. This is why Troll Enclaves tend to be located inside Dells; those structures as a whole are built around sources of strong magickal energy. It’s perfect. At a place like Glenfinnan, you eat, sleep and breathe magick, literally.

‘These parasites, then. I think they feed off magickal energy. If we go back to Glenfinnan, say, track down what is, or more probably was, their source of magick, I imagine we will find it drained. And that is what happened to its citizens, too. Whatever parasite they were carrying sucked them dry.’

Alban just watched me, his face unreadable, and I began to feel a flicker of doubt. The idea made sense to me, but he did not seem to be impressed. ‘Is all of this based purely upon logic and deduction?’ he asked.

‘Is that not good enough?’

To my relief, he grinned. ‘I suspect your theory of such a high level of accuracy, I wondered if you had access to some secret source of information after all.’

‘Some secret source of information I ought not to be going anywhere near?’ I tried to look coy, as though I might have just such a source.

‘Exactly.’ The grin faded and a frown appeared, the unsettling kind.

So much for making of myself a woman of mystery. ‘Alas, no,’ I sighed. ‘You do, of course, but the likes of a Vesper can only dream.’

The grin flashed again, wry this time. ‘You are occasionally talked of in my circles, you know. Your track record is impressive — so much so, I think there are those who suspect you of harbouring secret resources. But I begin to think it is merely an astuteness of mind that’s hard to hide from.’

‘So you do have a secret library!’

He laughed. ‘Point ably proven.’

‘May I see it?’

‘Of course not.’

Curses. ‘So why are you visiting me this morning?’

‘Take a guess.’

‘There is something you want me to do.’

‘You and your partner, yes. Jay, was it?’

‘It is.’

Baron Alban paused, and looked around. The common room was mostly empty at that hour of the morning, but not quite: Miranda sat wearily nursing a coffee on the other side of the room, and another chair was occupied by somebody from the Restoration department whose name I could never remember. ‘Is there somewhere more private we can talk?’

‘It’s never promising, when they say that in films.’

His lips twitched. ‘I have nothing nefarious in mind, I assure you.’

‘I don’t object to a little villainy, mind. I only draw the line at a lot.’

This he acknowledged with a gracious salute, and stood up. ‘The matter is somewhat urgent.’

‘Ohh.’ How interesting. I led him out of the common room at once, down to the ground floor and around to the south side. One of my favourite retreats is the expansive conservatory that occupies about half of the south wall. It belongs to the Botany department, and they do a fine job of keeping it filled with all the most interesting magickal herbs and plants, many of which bloom gloriously and smell delicious. I cannot understand why it isn’t constantly swarming with people, but I seem to be one of very few who visit if they don’t have to.

As I’d hoped, we arrived to find damp stone floors and the scent of wet earth in the air: the watering had already been done for the morning, and we could expect to have a quiet corner of the greenhouse to ourselves for a few minutes. I chose a sunny nook beneath an arching trellis heavy with something blue-blossoming and fragrant, and adopted a posture of intent interest.

The baron was uncharacteristically hesitant. He looked at the flowers, and at me, and at the clear glass ceiling, and appeared to be struggling to discover what to say.

‘I need your help,’ he finally ventured.

‘So you said.’

‘On an errand of a… slightly questionable nature.’

‘I was getting that feeling, too.’

His eyes smiled at me. ‘There is somewhere I urgently need to get into. It relates to the Enclaves, you see, so it is an emergency. But the place in question is locked. Extremely locked. And there are one or two other obstacles…’ He trailed off.

‘If Jay told you I have a taste for breaking and entering, he is quite wrong, and I deny all charges,’ I said serenely.

Alban lifted a brow in my general direction. ‘He’s said nothing of the kind, in fact. Do you indeed?’

‘As I said, all charges denied.’

‘That might not be a bad thing, at all.’

‘I grow ever more intrigued.’

Alban sighed. ‘Right, the fact is… there are three keys to the place in question. I have secured two of them, at some risk and cost to myself, but they are useless if I can’t get all three.’

Uh huh. ‘Where is the third one?’

He smiled at me, hope and mischief and sheepishness mixed up into one rather adorable, hard-to-resist package. ‘It’s, um. It’s here.’

‘Let me guess: you absolutely are not supposed to have it.’

‘Let’s just say Milady refused.’

It was my turn to raise a questioning brow.

‘She threatened to throw me off the tower top,’ he admitted.

‘Just how locked is this place?’

‘Extremely, thoroughly, completely and forever locked.’

‘I might guess that it is dangerous.’

‘Probably. Maybe. Who knows, anymore?’

I folded my arms. ‘So. Milady held the prospect of your swift and inescapable death over your head if you pursue this venture and you still want to find the key?’

‘No.’ His smile broadened, turned achingly hopeful. ‘I want you to find the key.’

‘That is spectacularly unflattering.’

‘Depends how you look at it.’ He leaned closer to me, so close that I could smell the fresh, cologne scent of him. ‘Do I consider you expendable? In no way whatsoever. Do I think you are a match for Milady? Why, yes. I absolutely do.’

My eyes narrowed. ‘You cannot flirt me into it, Lord Baron.’

That smile turned wickedly mischievous, and the twinkle reappeared in his eyes. ‘Can’t I?’

Damn him, he was far too good.

Though, he did not know me perfectly if he thought he needed to flirt me into it. I would have done it just for the sake of curiosity alone. A super-locked, mysterious somewhere, filled to the brim with who-knew-what manner of juicy secrets? Yes please. You can sign me up for that, zero questions asked.

‘What is it that you needed Jay for? I possibly don’t need to tell you that he will be firmly opposed to this proposition.’

‘Quite,’ agreed the baron. ‘We do not need to tell him about this particular part of it, perhaps, if you think he will disapprove. I will need his Waymastery skills later on, once we have secured the final key.’

‘One last question, then.’

He made a show of bracing himself. ‘Let’s hear it.’

‘What, or where, are you trying to get into?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘No good! Try again.’

‘Vesper. I can’t tell you that.’

‘Right. And you were planning to waltz off there with Jay and leave me languishing at Home alone, I suppose?’

He did not answer that in words, but his face told me everything I needed to know.

‘You’ll tell me, and you’ll take me with you.’

‘I can’t.’

‘No deal.’

‘Ves… you don’t understand.’

‘And I never will, if you keep me in the dark.’

He sighed, ran a hand over his hair — unwise, for those wavy locks were so perfectly ordered before, and what a shame — and eyed me with strong disfavour. ‘I could find someone else to get hold of the key.’

‘If there is a better choice, why are you talking to me?’

‘Fine.’ He made a don’t-blame-me-when-you’re-dead gesture and said, with strong reluctance: ‘Where we are going, if you really want to know—’

‘I do.’

‘—Is… is Farringale.’

Turn page ->

I do not know how Miranda got down to Gloucester so quickly.

It wasn’t that fast, I suppose; not compared to the (relative) ease with which Jay darts about the country. But she arrived a full hour sooner than I’d expected, and she brought approximately half of the Society with her. Soon, those eerily quiet caverns were awash with frantic Society agents racing to save, protect and preserve as much as they could.

The worst discovery was the crude pit that had been dug at the rear of the Enclave. Its aroma first announced its presence; we lifted our noses to the putrid scent of something rotting, and followed the stench.

It proved to consist of lots of somethings rotting. The pit lurked behind a pair of ramshackle, abandoned buildings both leaning dangerously to the left. A narrow track wound in between, and at the rear was the crater: perhaps ten feet deep and eight wide, roughly covered over in tarpaulin in a crude, futile attempt to conceal the horror of its contents. It was a bone pit, and filled nearly to the rim with the half-rotted corpses of dead animals. Most of them had had their flesh roughly stripped from their bones before they were discarded, though by no means expertly. Looking at the mess of bloodied flesh, the pale glint of bone here and there, the thick carpet of maggots crawling with grotesque enthusiasm over the whole, I could imagine the clumsy haste with which each beast had been dispatched to its fate.

They were not all magickal beasts, but too many were. Severed heads and tails and paws, dislocated beaks and feathered crests, claws and teeth, patches of decaying fur — each sad little remnant announced that here lay far too many of the precious creatures we fought so desperately to save.

I wished, too late, that Miranda had been far away when we found that pit. It broke her heart. She stood on the edge of it, shuddering uncontrollably, and looking so near to collapse that I had to steady her.

‘How could they?’ she gasped. ‘How could they do such a thing?’

‘Miranda.’ I gripped her arm hard, holding her up by sheer force of will if I had to. ‘They are sick. Can you understand that? This is not cruelty, it is desperation. They’ve been eating this much and they are still wasting away. They are starving.’

I don’t know if she heard me, or registered the import of my words, for she made no reply. She took a deep, deep breath, mopped her damp cheeks on the sleeve of her jumper, and left me. ‘Right,’ I heard her calling as she walked away. ‘There must be some creatures still alive down here, let’s find them! Quickly, please!’

Well and good. Miranda’s job was to take care of the animals. I needed to find someone who could help the trolls.

They were already being helped, I soon saw as I trotted gratefully away from that terrible pit. But ineptly. The Society had not yet realised how futile it was to try to communicate with the trolls of Darrowdale; we were too late for that. They needed more direct help, though of what nature, who knew?

A young man in a blue jacket raced past on his way to somewhere; I caught hold of him. ‘Did they send any of the medical staff down here? I need to talk to them.’ I’d asked for a doctor, but requests and instructions sometimes got a little garbled along the way.

‘Uh,’ said the boy. ‘Foster’s here somewhere.’ He did not stay to argue the point any longer, but dashed off again.

That was all right. They’d sent Rob, and that was all I needed to know. Robert Foster, with all his might, was also a doctor, a fact I sometimes forgot. I went in search of him, but ran into Jay first.

‘I was looking for you,’ said Jay. ‘We’re finished at Darrowdale, they can handle it from here. We need to move on.’

‘Yes, but first I have to talk to Robert.’

Jay’s brow snapped down. ‘Can’t it wait?’

‘No. Help me.’

‘Right.’ We resumed the search together — a frustrating process, for there were so many people down there, so much furious activity taking place, that it was hard to know where to begin. I saw Miranda once, striding past us with a thunderous look, and Zareen looking unusually grim, but no Robert.

It was Jay who spotted him at last. We had found our way back to that odd little square, where we had met the troll in the suit. Where it had been serene before, it was now swarming with people. ‘There,’ said Jay, pointing.

Rob was bending over the old lady under her blanket, tending to her with all the gentle care so characteristic of him. He was not trying to speak with her, but examined her face with a look of intense focus.

‘Rob,’ I said. ‘I think there’s some kind of a sickness here. They’ve all got it. Have you been to South Moors?’

Robert straightened up at my words, and directed a frowning look at me. He shook his head. ‘Should I?’

‘Yes. South Moors is going to end up like this, I know it. They’re displaying the same kinds of symptoms, only I think they are at an earlier stage. It’s like… some kind of wasting disease, and they’re all eating and eating but it’s not helping them.’

He nodded thoughtfully, casting an eye over the old lady, who still had not stirred. ‘That would make sense with what I am seeing. I’ll look into it.’

‘There’s another thing. The things they are eating — they’re mostly going for magickal beasts. Not exclusively, for I saw a fox and a lot of rats in that pit. But either by knowledge or instinct they’re targeting the magickals, and that has to be relevant.’

‘Thanks, Ves.’ He nodded to me and to Jay and turned back to his patient.

‘Can we go now?’ said Jay.

‘Immediately, and at once.’

If I could, I would be delighted to forget the urgent bustle of the next two days. Jay took us across England, into Wales and Ireland and back again; three great, gigantic, exhausting leaps every day. By the end of it, I was ready to collapse. Jay looked like he wished he had died three weeks ago.

From Darrowdale we proceeded to Parrow Hollow, Warwickshire, which to our relief was hale and well — merely Reclusive. Five of the other names on our list proved much the same, but the final one… that one was as bad as South Moors and Darrowdale put together. Baile Monaidh Enclave was a decimated wreck, well on its way to becoming a ghost town like Glenfinnan. Its handful of surviving citizens were skeletal, withered almost to the point of desiccation, and sunk in such deep stupor they were barely breathing. We summoned all the help we could, but we both knew it was bordering upon too late for them.

By the time we finally made it Home, my trembling legs threatened to dump me face-first into the cold, unforgiving stones of the cellar Waypoint, and I came close to decorating them with a liberal helping of my stomach contents besides. How Jay held himself together I do not know, but somehow he did. As the swirling winds of our passage slowly died away, he stood with his arms tightly folded, jaw clenched, sweat pouring off him.

I eyed him with a view to offering assistance, but he would not meet my gaze.

‘I want a bath,’ I announced. ‘A bath, two meals, three desserts, six cups of tea and sixteen hours in bed.’

Jay made a faint sound that might have been a chuckle, or perhaps it was a choked gasp of pure longing. ‘Three meals for me, and make that twenty-four hours asleep.’

‘You’ve earned it.’ I hesitated, reluctant to give voice to my next thought. But it couldn’t be helped. ‘Right after we talk to Milady.’

Jay backed up a step, his eyes widening in horror. ‘No! I am not doing that climb!’

‘Well…’ I forced my jellied legs to walk me to the door, and took hold of the handle. ‘This might be one of those times when…’ I opened the door and took a peek beyond. ‘When House loves us. Look.’

Instead of the narrow, dark passage and staircases of the cellar, the room beyond the door was clearly Milady’s tower. ‘Just six or seven steps and we’re there.’

‘Three, if you don’t have short legs.’ Jay demonstrated one of his long strides, which dwarfed mine. But he never made it to a second. He wobbled and stopped, swaying like a sapling in a strong wind.

‘Right, come on.’ I took his arm, propped him up against my shoulder, and hauled us both through the door.

Jay promptly collapsed all over Milady’s floor. I winced, for he hit the ground with a thud and that had to hurt. The carpet might be handsome, but it wasn’t especially thick.

The air sparkled.

‘Jay Patel,’ said Milady. ‘Are you well?’

‘Fine,’ croaked Jay. Probably. It was hard to understand him with his face buried in the rug like that.

Milady let the matter drop. ‘Welcome Jay, Ves. You have news for me, I collect.’

‘Tons of it.’ I gave myself permission to sit, too, if Jay was going to, though I managed the business with a touch more elegance than he. With the help of an occasional, muffled interpolation from Jay, I told Milady everything that had happened since she had sent us off to Glenfinnan.

She heard us out in her customary courteous silence, and then said: ‘Very good. There’s chocolate in the pot.’

I blinked, taken aback, for I had expected some form of comment upon our labours. A question or two, perhaps; confirmation of a point of detail somewhere; even a titbit of information we might yet be unaware of.

Ah, well. If chocolate was all I could have, chocolate I would most certainly take.

‘Do take them back down, House?’ said Milady, which surprised me again, for I had never yet heard of anybody directly addressing House and actually receiving a response. But Milady spoke with the confidence of being not only heard but attended to, and so she was, for when we opened the door again we found ourselves stepping over the threshold directly into the first floor common room.

‘I like you,’ said Jay.

‘Thank you.’

‘I was talking to the House.’

‘I know.’

He gave me a tiny smile, barely more than a twitch of his lips, and sank heavily into the nearest arm chair. The chocolate pot, apparently taking its cues from Milady in the same fashion as House, obligingly poured itself out for both of us, and we disappeared into all the sweet, spicy pleasures of hot chocolate for a blissful two or three minutes.

‘Is that it?’ said Jay, when he had finished slurping up every last trace of chocolate from his dainty cup.

‘Doubtful. Now we wait.’

‘For?’

I shrugged. ‘Milady does not yet know how to proceed, I would guess. She is most likely awaiting the return of our colleagues from Darrowdale and Baile Monaidh.’

‘Why do we have to wait for Milady? Isn’t there something we can do in the meantime?’

‘Besides sleeping?’

‘After the sleeping.’

‘Maybe, yes, and I do have an idea. But I want to sleep first. Don’t you?’

‘Desperately.’

So we did that.

My idea involved a day or two spent searching the libraries; always an appealing prospect, whatever the occasion. But before I had chance to get started, someone swept in upon me and knocked all my plans awry. I was reclining in the common room at the time, stretched across two wing-back chairs and half asleep. It was first thing of the following morning, in my defence, and though I had slept a great deal it did not yet feel like enough.

‘Vesper?’ said a low, beautiful voice, and I jerked upright, for I knew those delectable tones.

Baron Alban was back.

Turn page ->

That changed things. After Finnan, there was no more wandering through the spring sunshine admiring the scenery. We had several more distant Enclaves to visit, and every reason to expect trouble at most of them.

Jay called Nell, and gave her a terse, hurried report. She went away to consult with Milady, and called back barely ten minutes later. Jay listened in taut silence.

‘There’s a team on the way to investigate Finnan,’ he said when the call was done, shoving his phone back into his pocket. ‘And South Moors. We’re to go on to Darrowdale.’

‘All right.’

‘That’s in Gloucestershire,’ he added helpfully.

‘I knew that.’

‘Really?’

‘No.’

There might have been a roll of the eye in answer, but I couldn’t be sure, because Jay turned his back on me and marched off.

The disappointing part about the Ways is that you cannot drift away to one of them from literally Anywhere. In that, I suppose it isn’t much different from driving. You can go more or less anywhere you like by car, but if you get out and wander away from your vehicle, you’ll have to go find it again before you can drive on.

At least Jay and I did not have to contend with the misery that is traffic. It was, however, necessary for us to trawl our way back to the henge, at a pace which left both of us sweating and winded. From there, Jay whisked us off before either of us had chance to catch our breath.

The process was less disordering the second time, at least for me. I was no longer alarmed by the whirling winds, or the disorienting sensation of far-too-rapid movement. My insides objected a little less, too.

Jay, though, looked every bit as distressed as the first time. He spent a half-minute or so doubled over, elbows on his knees, shaking and gulping in air like a drowning man.

I began to feel concerned for him. We had several more Enclaves yet to visit, and must contrive to travel to at least three a day. Would the impact upon him grow more bearable, or less so? Would he cope?

I knew better than to express any of these thoughts, though. We were strangers to one another, near enough; would he hear concern in my words, or doubts as to his competency? I could not guess, and therefore did not take the risk.

‘We’re looking for the Giant’s Stone,’ said Jay once he had dragged himself upright. ‘I think that’s what they call it, around here.’ The henge he had brought us to was even more underwhelming than the last: just a circle of earthworks, no standing monuments of any kind. Had there never been any, or had the remnants faded with the passage of time? The henge was situated in the kind of copse that could exist pretty much anywhere in Britain: a raggety cluster of birch and oak trees randomly spread about, the floor carpeted in ivy and ferns. I could only take Jay’s word for it that we were in Gloucestershire — or, in fact, that there was a henge there at all, for the ground was so overgrown with ivy, I saw little but an indeterminate array of dips and slopes.

The Giant’s Stone, though, was much more distinct: twin slabs of ancient stone, prettily grown over with moss. I suppose they did look rather like sleeping giants; was that why they had been given the name? Or had somebody once seen an unglamoured troll hereabouts, and misinterpreted the vision? Happily for us, the Stone was not too far from the henge we’d used, perhaps only a mile. Still, it felt far enough away under the circumstances. I am by no means unfit, but I’m not a jogger.

I made a mental note to take up running when I got home. Apparently Jay and I were to be working together for a while, and with him… for all his dissatisfaction with the stairs, I was starting to think I might need to up my game.

Following my earlier lead, Jay set his palm to the nearest stone and entreated entrance. And…

…entrance was granted. Instantly. One of the stones ponderously rolled aside, revealing a grand subterranean entryway. Or in other words, a dirt tunnel heading deep underground.

‘That’s refreshing,’ I said. ‘How lovely and hospitable.’

But Jay was frowning. ‘I don’t think so. It’s more like the door was open anyway. I just gave it a little shove.’

Nobody leaves their front door open like that, not intentionally. My heart flickered with alarm. Jay disappeared into the downward-sloping tunnel and I followed; we all but ran the quarter-mile or so until the tall, earth-walled tunnel opened out into Darrowdale Enclave.

There is a large, populous Troll Enclave somewhere else in Gloucestershire:  the Enclave of the Forest of Dean. It, too, is subterranean, spread across a network of natural caverns beneath the forest. Apparently Gloucestershire trolls tend to be underground dwellers, for the smaller, lesser-known Darrowdale is much the same. We stepped out into a large cavern, its ceiling so far above our heads I couldn’t begin to imagine how far up it was. The rock walls were of mottled colours, scattered with chunks of raw iron ore and daubed with reddish purple ochre. The houses here were built into the rock walls, sloping structures made from irregular stone blocks fitted into place like some kind of Tetris puzzle. They had made significant use of the ochre, I judged, for red, purple and yellowish colours predominated in the paints and stones they had used.

Darrowdale was not abandoned. The trolls there strongly resembled the inhabitants of South Moors, only they were… worse. Jay and I walked the length of a wide main street unchallenged; its residents watched us pass with dull, uninterested eyes and made no move to stop us, to welcome us or to talk to us at all. I saw one old lady stretched across a low bench positioned in a pretty square at the end of the street; she lay covered with crocheted blankets, and looked as though she had not moved in a long time. In fact, she looked as though she may no longer be capable of movement at all. Only the faintest rising and falling of the blanket told me she lived at all: she was still breathing.

Everywhere we looked, the trolls of Darrowdale drifted in some kind of stupor. Many sat slumped upon benches or chairs or even upon the earthy, rock-inset floors, unmoving and uninterested in moving. Those who were still on their feet slouched and shuffled their way around, as though the effort of putting one foot in front of the other was almost insurmountably difficult. If nobody was speaking to us, they were not speaking to each other either, for the Enclave was eerily quiet.

‘No one’s doing anything,’ whispered Jay, appalled.

It was an appalling sight. So much life, there, in that populous little town, and yet no life at all.

‘That’s not quite true,’ I replied, struck by a sudden realisation. ‘They are eating. Look.’ The square we were standing in was ringed with houses; a suit-clad troll sat before one of them upon a stone bench, a chunk of raw meat in one hand. He ate with no apparent pleasure whatsoever, no relish, no attention for whatever he was eating. His jaws moved slowly, chewing his food with a methodical, mechanical determination to imbibe.

The image was faintly obscene, perhaps because it was so incongruous. His suit, though in dire need of laundering, was neat and smart and looked quite new; his house, too, had obviously seen a lot of care over the years. But he clutched his hunk of meat in a clawed grip, heedless of the blood that ran over his fingers and down his wrist to stain the cuffs of his white shirt. He was so expressionless I might have taken him for a statue, were he not moving. His teeth were stained, and flecked with torn-off flesh and blood.

Jay eyed him with poorly concealed disgust. ‘Trolls aren’t normally given to eating their meat raw, are they?’

‘Well, you’ve met Baron Alban. Do you think he’d go for that?’

‘He did say that trolls will eat pretty much anything.’

‘So they will. Lightly fried in butter, delicately sauteed, oven-roasted, a la sous vide, you name it. There is a reason why the Society employs a couple of troll chefs.’

‘Then why are they eating raw meat?’

The suited troll wasn’t the only one. Now that I thought to look for it, it was everywhere: most of the people we could see had a chunk of something raw and bleeding in one hand, even if they had yet to muster the energy to actually consume it. I took a closer look at the old lady on her bench, and saw that she had a morsel of something red and glistening clenched between her teeth. ‘Good question.’

‘And why are they all eating, all the time? Especially when they aren’t doing anything else.’

‘Also a good question.’ I approached the troll in his suit, moving slowly and carefully. I didn’t want to startle him; that would be neither to his benefit, nor mine.

I needn’t have taken such care. He did not even look at me as I drew near, only continued his grim war of attrition against the meat he held.

‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘Good afternoon. We come from the Society for Magickal Heritage, in Yorkshire. May we ask you a couple of questions?’

I was not particularly expecting a response, nor did I get one. But he tried. His gaze flicked to me, and he spent some ten or fifteen seconds merely looking at my face. Then his mouth moved. At first I thought he was chewing again, but no. He made several attempts to form words, his lips struggling to shape syllables which did not emerge.

At length, he abandoned this effort and went back to his meat.

I frowned, noticing something else. The fabric of that natty suit hung oddly. The fit was wrong. That alone is no surprise; few people buy bespoke tailored suits anymore, they are largely purchased off-the-peg. When you do that, who knows what you are getting yourself into? But a perfectly-fitted ensemble isn’t likely to be it.

This was different. This troll had lost weight since he’d bought that suit. A lot of weight. The folds of fabric hung off him.

‘Why are you eating that?’ said Jay, coming up behind me. ‘Why is everybody eating all the time?’

He did not receive an answer either. The troll did not even look at Jay, but went on chewing, oblivious.

I turned away from the uncommunicative troll and stared around in dismay. ‘You know, Jay, while that’s a relevant question and all… I’m also inclined to ask what they are eating. Where did they get all this meat?’ I was thinking, of course, of the two alikats at South Moors, who had been seconds away from being turned into dinner when we had intercepted them.

‘Oh,’ said Jay, and then added: ‘Shit.’

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Jay looked like he was strongly disposed to vomit.

‘Are you all right?’ I said. Quite uselessly, for he clearly was not.

‘Fine,’ he replied through gritted teeth.

‘Your legs are shaking.’

‘My everything is shaking. But I’m fine.’ He got to his feet and stood, visibly trembling. But since he was also wearing the clenched-jaw look of a man who will not be helped, I left him to it and devoted myself to a largely futile attempt to figure out where we had ended up.

We were in the middle of a henge, of course, though it was not the flashy kind that hordes of tourists come to see. Little remained of it but a ring of decaying wooden posts half-sunk in wet earth, and surrounding that (and us) were… trees. Straggly ones, thick enough to obscure whatever lay beyond but otherwise rather sad-looking.

‘Place requires some tending,’ I said.

‘Most of Britain requires some tending.’ Jay took a deep breath, stretched, cast a quick glance around himself and set his face resolutely in what appeared to me to be a completely random direction. ‘Ready to go?’

‘Where? I have no idea where we are.’

‘Somewhere in the vicinity of Glenfinnan. We’re a few miles away from Finnan Enclave.’ He checked my shoes and, oddly, smiled. ‘Boots. Good.’

‘Why do you seem surprised?’

‘I thought you might have shown up in heels or something.’

‘I am not that much of an airhead, Mr. Patel.’ I haughtily shouldered my bag. ‘Lead on.’

Jay’s comment did not much surprise me. I am not expected to be much of a walker; you wouldn’t anticipate that about a woman with a fondness for delicate, impractical clothes and improbable hair, would you? But actually, I love to walk. I enjoyed our hike, for the environs of Glenfinnan proved to be green hill country, dotted with patches of woodland, and here and there glimpses of an expanse of clear, serene water.  The air was bright and crisp and I breathed deeply, somewhat regretful that our errand was of such urgency as to prevent of our exploring.

Jay clearly had no soul for scenery, for he marched on without ever pausing to admire. Nor did he ever waver as to direction. He certainly had focus. He seemed so little inconvenienced by his obvious shakiness before, I didn’t want to admit that my knees were shaking, too, and it took half an hour for the waves of nausea to stop assaulting my stomach. I pretended I was fine and so did Jay, and we accomplished our forced-march in rather less than an hour.

Finnan Enclave’s front door proved to be at the base of one of those gorgeous, craggy hills, a bit like at South Moors. We stood in the twin shadow of two swelling peaks, one rising on either side of us. Drifty clouds had raced over the sun, and we stood bathed in a mild, unpromising gloom as we studied the green, heathery slopes before us.

‘Are you sure this is it?’ I said after a while, when Jay seemed undecided.

‘Yes.’

All right, then. I waited while Jay rambled about a bit, looking this way and that in a decisive fashion, and occasionally touching protruding rocks.

‘Do you know where the door is?’ I said at last.

‘Of course I do.’

I waited a little longer, watching in idle delight as a tiny pink skreerat poked its head out from in between a tuft of grasses, eyed Jay beadily, and vanished again.

Jay finally gave up his futile search. ‘It’s one of these,’ he said, gesturing broadly at a tumble of fallen boulders.

‘How do you know that?’

‘I looked them up on Nell’s system before we left.’

Clever of him, though it was not currently availing us much. I rummaged in my satchel, ignoring Jay’s disbelief as I extracted rather more objects from within than could reasonably fit inside. ‘Aha,’ I murmured, drawing forth my oversized key and a pendulum, the kind that had probably once belonged inside a grandfather clock. ‘This,’ I said to Jay, ‘is a basic burglar’s toolkit, magicker style.’ It was the work of a moment to coax the pendulum into activity and it began to swing gently in my hand, back and forth, back and forth. ‘It is a little clumsy, the pendulum,’ I observed as the charm did its work. ‘I would have enchanted a pathfinder’s charm onto something a bit more elegant, myself. A filigree compass, for example, with quartz fittings and a handsome chain. But—’ I paused as the pendulum’s sway slowed and eventually stopped, leaving the device pointing unerringly at a large, craggy black boulder about six feet away from where Jay had stopped. ‘It works, proving that elegance is not at all necessary in life.’ I smiled, packed the pendulum away again, and advanced upon the boulder.

We had to go through the usual process of requesting entrance, of course. I laid my palm against the boulder and announced us. When that didn’t work, Jay tried.

We were not surprised to find that the silent hills remained silent. There was no promising creak of an opening door, no gust of air to welcome us into a yawning portal.

‘Breaking and entering it is, then,’ I said, with a sense of satisfaction I could not disguise. I can’t help it: I love doing things the sneaky way.

Jay was not so thrilled. He did not object, for Milady had essentially ordered us to get into these Enclaves one way or another. But he was visibly uncomfortable as I employed my unlocking charm upon the boulder and…

…and nothing. It did not work. Oh, the key worked all right; it glimmered with that promising aura of power, and the boulder glittered in response. There was communication between the two charms, as there should have been, but the boulder declined to be affected by it. The rock remained untouched, stubbornly inert and immoveable.

‘Some burglar you are,’ said Jay.

I put the key away. ‘On to Plan C.’ That skreerat had to have come from somewhere. Magickal beasts don’t typically wander the wilds as freely as, say, wood mice or stoats or whatever. They mostly stick to the Dells, which are pockets of Hidden landscapes folded between the Ways. Finnan Enclave had firmly closed its outer doors upon the non-magickal world, as they all did, but its regular entrance would undoubtedly be situated on the edge of one of these Dells. If we could not walk straight into the Enclave, we’d have to get into Finnan Dell first and then break into the Troll settlement. Their back door, so to speak, was unlikely to be so well protected as their front door.

I went back to the spot where I’d seen the skreerat, and kept walking that way. It wasn’t too long before I saw it again: a glimpse of pinkish-grey fur whisking into the concealing cover of a cluster of frondy grasses.

I delved into my satchel again, removed an object which markedly resembled an ordinary torch (because, in essentials, it was), and switched it on. Its beam blazed forth, illuminating the grassy path the skreerat had followed in a haze of misty light.

‘Is there anything you aren’t carrying in that bag?’ said Jay.

‘Nope.’ I waved the torch around a bit, but the quality of the light did not change.

Hm.

‘The wonderful thing about the Society is its forward-thinking attitude,’ I told Jay as I clomped around in circles, throwing hazy light everywhere. ‘Somewhere in the attic is Orlando’s lab. Nobody is allowed in there, not ever, but the most wondrous things come out. Including this torch. It’s a hybrid, see? It is electronic in its basic function, but Orlando blends these things with charms in some unfathomable way and comes out with totally unique effects.’ There: a flicker of bright energy in the near distance, lancing through the brumous glow like a lightning strike. ‘This particular one illuminates traces of magickal energy, making them visible to the eye in ways they usually aren’t. See that?’

Jay saw it. He was off before I could say another word, striding ahead of me at such speed I found it hard to keep up.

About twenty seconds later he disappeared.

I found the spot where I had last seen him, and shone my torch about one more time. There was a long, vertical split in the air: a thin, wavering line about twelve feet high, traced in white light.

I turned sideways, and fell through the tear in the atmosphere.

There are those who manage this procedure with rather more grace than I. I can only achieve a chaotic tumble, so of course I ended in an undignified heap upon the floor of the Dell beyond. I chose not to worry about what Jay might think of this display of clumsiness and quickly picked myself up, dusted bits of grass off my coat with studied nonchalance, and took a look around.

Jay, thankfully, was about ten feet off, and not looking my way. No wonder, either, for when one is surrounded by such spectacular beauty, why waste your glances upon me? Finnan Dell was like Glenfinnan, only more colourful. We stood at the top of a low, sloping hill; ranged around us was a lusciously rolling landscape composed of several more peaks and dales, all dusted with heathery grasses ranging in hue from serene jade to vivid emerald. Clumps of bushes painted in shades of blue were dotted here and there, sprouting spring blossoms in glorious profusion. The air was balmy, and held that slightly hushed, hazy quality the outer world only displays at the height of summer, and early in the morning. A lake lay spread at the bottom of the valley before us, adding the clean scent of fresh water to the bouquet of floral nectar I was luxuriating in.

‘The Enclave is this way,’ said Jay in a no-nonsense tone, proving once again that he has no heart for beauty.

I fell in behind him anyway. We did have a job to do.

And there we were, faced with another dreaming hillside, though this one was attractively sun-drenched. Finnan Enclave’s Dellside door was another huge, black boulder embedded into the hill’s face. No one answered this one, either, but my excellent key worked like a charm (…so to speak). The boulder groaned mightily and heaved itself aside, and in we went.

My first impression of Finnan Enclave was that it was, unbelievably, messier than South Moors. The winding, curved stone streets were familiar enough, though their houses were of a different architectural style: stone and wood-built with little arches, and some intriguing polychromatic brickwork. Grand, handsome and sweet in equal measure, and most attractive. I’d live in such a house.

But those streets were thick with debris. A heavy, not unpleasant scent of compost hung in the air, the source of which proved to be the piles of long-rotted something heaped up in every sweeping corner. A thick, oppressive silence hung over everything, and though we walked down street after street, we saw nobody about. No one at all.

Jay and I exchanged twin looks of concern. ‘I think it is time for a little more breaking and entering,’ I suggested.

I expected a refusal from Jay, and he did hesitate, but finally he nodded. ‘I don’t think we’ll even need your key, here. Look.’ He indicated the nearest house, whose grand elmwood door hung slightly ajar.

Not a good sign.

‘None of this mess is litter,’ I said, upon a sudden realisation.

Jay, already halfway up the path to the house, stopped. ‘What?’

‘There’s no litter. This is all leaves, twigs, branches, dead flowers… swept in off the hillsides, probably. There is nothing here that looks like it was dropped by somebody living.’

Jay frowned, and made for the house again at a half-run. I followed.

The house was gorgeous inside, all wood panelling and sweeping archways. There was an entrance hall hung with tapestries, a dining room, two parlours, a handsome stone kitchen… whoever lived here lacked for neither money nor taste, clearly.

Only, it was empty. Not only were there no signs of life, there were no signs there had ever been any life. Everything was dust and desolation, like some kind of show home that had fallen out of use.

‘This is weird,’ said Jay, and I agreed, for it was weird.

It wasn’t just that house, either, for a quick survey of the next few along the street told the same story. They were all empty, dust-laden, abandoned.

‘This entire town is dead,’ said Jay wonderingly, when we regained the street.

‘As a dodo,’ I agreed.

Jay took out his phone. ‘We’ve got a big problem here.’

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