The Heart of Hyndorin

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

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

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

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

‘Of course,’ I said, frowning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Wardens?’

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

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

‘You never bring in anyone from outside?’

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

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

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

I was growing tired of that general theme.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘The, er, regulator?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Yes. And everyone else.’

‘Has no one else ever got in? Ever?’

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

‘And… what came of that?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Yes?’

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

‘Lied?’ he repeated, with strong disapproval.

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

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

I sagged back in my chair again, disappointed.

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

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

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

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

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

He was wearing a familiar jacket.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I could swear I heard him giggle.

‘Good stuff?’ I said.

‘Delicious,’ he purred.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Which ones would you like me to prioritise?’

‘The… most interesting ones?’

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

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

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

Nor was he human.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh. Then I was on my own in here.

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

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

But courtesies first.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘May I… ask what you mean?’ I said.

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

‘But… why?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Ready?’ said Jay.

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

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

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

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

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

No problem.

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

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

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

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

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

‘Opportunity missed,’ I agreed.

‘There’s still time.’

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

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

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

‘The Work in Progress,’ said Jay.

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

She sat, tongue lolling, and panted.

‘We’re on our own.’

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

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

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

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

If they had, where were they?

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

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

‘You think?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No griffins on past missions?’

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

‘Yours is an interesting job.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing moved.

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

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

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

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

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

‘Jay—’ I said, reaching for him.

My hand closed upon empty air.

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

Or an evil twin.

Ah, well.

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

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

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

‘Hi!’ I said after a moment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No, that would be silly,’ I agreed.

‘That would be silly?’ Jay yelped.

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

‘Noted,’ said Jay.

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

I was hungry again!

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

Damnit. Poor timing.

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

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

‘Perhaps we’d better get on, then?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I looked at Emellana. ‘Any ideas?’

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

I sighed. ‘Anybody?’

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

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

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

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

I counted. Nine, not twelve.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No clue.’

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

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

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

‘Right.’

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

‘Ves,’ said Emellana.

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

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

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

Almost imperceptibly, one of the three silver hands moved.

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

‘With three hands?’ said Alban.

‘Whatever it is attracted to is perhaps complicated.’

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

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

Ten minutes later, we made another discovery.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Em,’ I said in awe. ‘You’re purple.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Blue.’

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

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

‘Precisely.’

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

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

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

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

‘… good point.’

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

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

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

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

‘The light?’

Alban nodded once.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘We’ll be—’ I said.

‘Ves.’ Jay hit my arm, and pointed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stranger things were happening out here.

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

‘Pup!’ I wailed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘With?’

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

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

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

Right.

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

Is it important enough?

Yes.

Are you brave enough?

Hell, yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dignity intact.

Sort of.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Not yet,’ he said, eyeing me warily.

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

Pup watched the Wand’s progress with greedy avarice.

I knew how she felt.

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

I left Wyr gazing after me, nonplussed.

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

‘Impressive,’ said she, unruffled as ever.

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

Nobody answered me.

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

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

‘Me too,’ said Alban.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not the time to get distracted, Ves.

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

Jay gave me a shocked look.

‘Er, not fatally,’ I clarified.

‘Right.’

‘Probably.’

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

To be fair, I might have.

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

‘Thank you,’ I murmured.

He briefly squeezed my hand, and released it.

My heart eased a little.

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

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

‘You know he’s going to mess us up first chance he gets?’ said Jay, eyeing Wyr sourly. The subject of his justifiable resentment was still in Emellana’s custody, engaged in some loud debate I had not bothered to listen to. But as I watched, Emellana released him — none too gently — and his gaze fastened instantly on Jay and I, obviously holding secret counsels without him.

‘I know,’ I murmured. ‘I’m counting on it.’

‘Wha—’ said Jay.

Slightly louder, I said: ‘I know, Jay, and you’re right to be concerned. Just don’t tell him about the Wand and the ring, all right? It’s best if he doesn’t know what was in that scroll-case.’

Jay, to his credit, only blinked once at me in confusion before his face cleared to impassiveness, and he nodded. His eyes shifted sideways to Wyr in a creditable display of craftiness.

Wyr gave no sign of having heard me. ‘Ready to go?’ he said, and I noticed he gave Baron Alban a wide berth as he passed.

‘Quickly, please.’

Miranda, to my surprise, spoke up. ‘One question, first. Whereabouts did you leave your new employers, Wyr?’

‘Lady Fenella? Truth be told, I haven’t seen her in a while.’

I thought I saw relief on Miranda’s face, before she turned away. No wonder. She’d defected to Fenella Beaumont’s miserable organisation, only to (hopefully) defect back; she wasn’t going to be popular with anybody, at this rate.

Course, one could rely on nothing Wyr said. Me, I counted on running into a few of our least favourite foes the moment we got anywhere near Torvaston’s Enclave.

Couldn’t be helped.

‘Tokens?’ said Wyr.

I’d noticed Alban stuffing handfuls of the things into his pockets soon after he had appeared, but those would doubtless be to whichever henges he’d yet to go in search of us. Not much use. ‘We will be travelling with Patel Windways,’ I said.

Wyr looked nonplussed.

‘That guy,’ I clarified, pointing at Jay.

‘You know that’s—’

‘Illegal,’ I said, interrupting him. ‘We know.’

‘You’ll be thieving in no time.’

I opened my mouth to object to this monstrously unfair charge, but had to close it again in silence. Not only had I given the sneak permission to plunder Torvaston’s Enclave at his leisure, I also proposed to divest the place of its most important and valuable artefact myself. We could argue semantics and historical-rights-of-ownership all day, and it would still all boil down to something uncomfortably close to theft.

Noticing he had successfully got under my skin, Wyr grinned at me. ‘Well, ladies and gents, we’re heading north,’ he said. ‘Far north.’

I wasted a moment in useless doubts. He was a back-stabbing little shit. Would even the promise of uncontested plunder of a lost king’s personal effects be enough to keep him in line? Was he taking us to the Hyndorin Mountains, or was he once again sweeping us away to somewhere else?

I shook the thoughts away. It was a gamble worth taking. The worst he could do was delay us (again); meanwhile, it could take us days or weeks to work out where to go without help.

‘Lead on,’ I said. ‘We’re right behind you.’

That he had indeed taken us far north seemed indubitable, a half-hour or so later. We exited the last of a sequence of henge-complexes, each decreasing in size, upon a windy peak somewhere bone-chillingly cold. Also distressingly short on oxygen.

Maybe this was the brilliant new plan. Drop us somewhere freezing and dangerously high up, and leave us to die of exposure.

No, he couldn’t do that. The way out was embedded into the rock, a circle of weathered, craggy stones swept clean by the wind. The landscape offered little else in the way of hope. We stood, miserably huddled, on a soaring mountainside, surrounded by nothing but more mountains. Bleak and beautiful, these peaks were of a deep, dark stone; snow dusted the tops of those on the near horizon, rising still higher into the mist-white skies. 

‘This way,’ said Wyr, and set off, winding his way in between two jutting crags. He had his hands in his pockets, probably to protect them from the cold, but he seemed untouched by the conditions. He sauntered off, whistling.

‘Your ring is gone,’ said Alban in my ear.

That cost me a pang. Yes, I had deliberately hung it out as bait for the double-crossing thief. No, I didn’t love losing it.

‘Then I guess I’m stuck with pink hair forever,’ I said.

‘Luckily, it suits you.’

I smiled up at him. ‘You can definitely stay.’

‘That was the plan.’

We set off after Wyr, me keeping a weather eye on the horizon for any unhappy surprises leaping out of the air. I trusted Jay to keep track of where we were going, in case we needed to find our way back to the henge. ‘You do have the mysterious miscellany somewhere about your person?’ I said softly to Alban.

‘You mean the other… articles? Yes, I do.’

‘Thank goodness.’

He grinned. ‘Your faith in me is touching.’

‘Actually I had no idea if you’d thought to bring them along.’

‘…that was a gamble?’

‘Yep.’

‘You’re a brave woman.’

‘Or stark raving mad. The point is the subject of some debate, at Home.’

‘Fair.’

‘I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before we left.’

‘Other things on your mind.’

True, but that was little excuse. I suppose the peculiar paraphernalia had seemed so random as to be hardly relevant, and I hadn’t set eyes on any of it since that last trip to Mandridore. I’d clean forgotten.

Fortunate that we had Alban to rectify that particular mistake.

Then again, if I had brought them with me, they would probably have disappeared into Wyr’s possession along with the scroll-case. Swings and roundabouts.

Wyr led us on a winding route, bearing steadily downwards towards a sloping valley below. We walked for the best part of half an hour, getting colder by the minute. By the time he finally stopped, my teeth were chattering. Even Alban looked uncomfortable.

‘And here,’ said Wyr, ‘is where we all part ways with the straight and narrow.’ He gestured at the ground, his hand tracing a vaguely circular shape in the air.

Without which clue, I might never have spotted the henge. It was so deeply embedded as to be virtually invisible, only the rough outlines of a ring of rock discernible. ‘More Ways?’ I said.

‘This one isn’t part of the official network, and you can’t buy tokens to use it.’

‘How did you know about it?’ said Jay. I saw his point. The stone circle was so well camouflaged, if I hadn’t known what I was looking for, I’d never have spotted it at all.

‘Old diaries, old stories, rumours and whispers and many, many weeks of searching,’ said Wyr. ‘None of which,’ he added with a twisted smile, ‘were conducted by me. I just bought the information.’

‘Nice when you can get away with that,’ said Jay sourly.

‘Extremely. Shall we go?’

Jay looked drawn and tired, and small wonder; we had worked him pretty hard even to get this far. But he was growing accustomed to the potency of the Ways out here, or so I assumed, for while he looked weary, he also looked composed. Sane. Not losing his marbles, as he had the first time he had travelled by henge complex.

Still, I felt a flicker of concern for him. ‘Are there many more?’ I asked of Wyr.

‘This is the last one.’

I looked questioningly at Jay, who nodded back. I’m fine, that meant.

Whether he was genuinely fine or just being a raging man about everything, who was to say? We didn’t have a lot of choice but to let him take us through.

‘I’m going first, with Ves and Alban,’ Jay announced.

Was he too tired to take all of us at once, or was this a precaution? I couldn’t read his expression. ‘Fine,’ I said, and stepped up to his side.

Alban joined us on Jay’s other side, and Jay began the process of summoning the Winds of the Ways. A swift breeze swept up, and blew back my hair. It smelled, oddly, of cherries.

‘Where does this one go to?’ I said to Wyr.

‘Into the Hyndorin Enclave.’

‘What? I thought you said it had been closed for centuries.’

‘Not the entire thing. Just the part that matters, that being wherever Torvaston and his friends settled.’

I wanted to ask more questions, specifically about what there was to expect in the mythical Hyndorin hideaway. But I was too late. In a whirl of Winds and a flurry of snowflakes — somehow — Jay swept us away.

And in that instant, Wyr made a lunge for us. I felt him fall heavily against my side — the side upon which my trusty satchel hung — and he clung to me as we travelled through the Ways.

When the whirl of motion ceased and the world stopped spinning around us, I opened my eyes to the sight of Wyr sprinting away from us.

Mellow sunlight glinted off the shape of my beloved Sunstone Wand, clutched tight in his hand.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘That got rid of him.’

Jay pressed my hand in brief sympathy. I suppose he knew what it cost me to turn those two treasures over to Wyr, and watch him abscond with them.

I reminded myself that retrieving them was not beyond the bounds of possibility, and that even if it was, they were well lost. This time, Wyr had played right into my hands, and I intended to capitalise on that.

‘We need to follow him,’ I said. ‘Quickly. He’s on his way to Torvaston’s doorstep, or my name isn’t Ves.’

‘Right.’ Jay gathered himself, and vanished.

‘Your name isn’t Ves,’ said Alban. ‘Technically.’

‘And you aren’t technically a baron.’

‘Touché.’

We had ended up somewhere I never could have expected. Considering everything — like the references to the Hyndorin Mountains, for one, and Torvaston’s hand-drawn map suggestive of rugged peaks — I had anticipated a properly mountainous landscape. Actually, we were in a green-and-golden valley, apparently in the height of summer. Tufts of feathery, heathery purple were dotted here and there, together with sufficient flowers to drown in. And while I am something of an enthusiast for flowers, I recognised exactly none of the species I saw around me.

Trees we had, too, the gnarly kind indicative of great age. Despite this, they were laden with blossom and swelling fruits — including something that smelled like cherries, even if they looked more like apples. That explained that aroma.

Meanwhile, despite the evidence of high summer going on all around us, the skies overhead were as misty-white as those above the peaks we’d just come through. And, most peculiarly of all, a light dusting of snow drifted steadily down from those skies, though it vanished or melted away before it could reach so much as a single blade of the grass upon the ground.

The flow of magick was significantly more potent. Not Vale levels, not yet. Chaotic enough to produce some odd and interesting effects, though. Strong enough to ease the skin-prickling discomfort and head-swimming disorientation I’d suffered ever since we had left the vicinity of Vale.

I liked it at once.

‘Strangest Enclave yet, by a mile,’ I said, keeping an eye on the direction Wyr had gone in. He was rapidly vanishing from sight. I wanted to hare madly after him, before he could disappear altogether into the mist.

But I also didn’t want to do this without Jay, and Em, and Miranda.

 ‘I’ve never even heard of—’ said Alban, holding out a hand to catch a bit of the uncanny snow.

But as he spoke, a gaggle of people exploded into the waiting henge: Jay, Em, and Miranda, with Pup struggling in Emellana’s arms.

‘Everyone okay?’ I said, looking especially at Jay.

Too out of breath to speak, he nonetheless managed a nod in answer to my question. I wished we had time to let him rest, but we didn’t.

‘Righto,’ I said. ‘Mir, can you send up your bird? We need to track Wyr.’

‘Done.’ Miranda gave a soft whistle, and something small shot up into the air in a blur of bright blue feathers.

I retrieved Pup from Emellana’s grip, and set her down. ‘Pup of mine,’ I said. ‘It’s your turn to save the day. Remember Wyr?’

Pup sat staring up at me, grinning and wagging her tufty yellow tail. A single snowflake settled on the tip of her stubby horn.

‘If you can catch him, you can bite him,’ I said, and pointed.

Pup gave a series of yaps, turned in a frenzied circle, and then tore off after Wyr.

‘And now we run,’ I said, praying for a burst of unnatural speed courtesy of my unnaturally magickal state.

Taking a deep, deep breath, I legged it after the Pup — and Wyr.

Following Alban’s several shocking disclosures, an appalled silence fell. I wrestled with a growing sense of panic, and more or less succeeded in stuffing it back down. Worst time in the history of magick to panic, Ves.

Jay shook himself. ‘Plan?’ he said. ‘We need a plan.’

‘I suppose the plan’s unchanged,’ I said, watching Wyr with narrowed eyes. Something about him didn’t seem quite right… ‘I mean, we still need to get into Torvaston’s secret mountain enclave.’

‘Right,’ said Jay.

‘Just with a bit more urgency than before… you aren’t actually deaf, are you?’ I said, the latter directed at Wyr, who lay prone on the floor. His air of casual ease had seemed a bit studied.

He rolled his eyes and sat up. ‘She’s good,’ he said, indicating Emellana with a nod of his head. ‘But so am I.’

‘So you heard all of that.’

‘A fair bit of it, yes.’

‘I’ve a theory,’ I said. ‘Let’s test it.’

Wyr waited.

‘Ancestria Magicka.’

Wyr sat like a stone, carefully failing to react.

‘Last time I said that, you twitched.’

‘Doubtful.’

‘You did.’

‘Did not.’

‘Can’t I just wring his neck?’ I said plaintively, to no one in particular.

‘No,’ said Jay.

‘Damnit.’

‘But I might.’

Wyr held up his hands, and scooted back a bit. ‘I deny everything.’

‘He’s heard of Ancestria Magicka, I’m sure of it,’ I said, ignoring Wyr. ‘How do you suppose that’s possible?’

‘He’s met them before,’ said Jay.

‘Right. It’s no coincidence that we ran into you, is it?’ I nudged Wyr with my foot, a gesture not quite a kick. ‘You were meant to intercept us.’

‘Nope,’ said Wyr.

With a sudden, swift movement, Emellana did exactly what I’d been dying to do. She swept the stupid hat off his head, and hurled it out over the peak. The wind caught it, and sent it sailing merrily away.

‘Hey—’ said Wyr.

He got no further, for Emellana picked him up, and stood poised to send him sailing straight after his hat. ‘Still no?’ she said in a pleasant tone.

Wyr swallowed. Good he might be, but I’d love to see the levitation charm that could contend with a precipitate fall down about a thousand feet. ‘Er,’ he said. ‘Okay, I might have heard of them.’

‘They hired you,’ said Em.

‘Maybe.’

‘What were you supposed to do?’

Wyr sighed, hanging in Emellana’s uncompromising grip like a sack of bricks. ‘I was meant to help you.’

‘Help us?’ I said, frowning. ‘Why? Oh.’ I scrubbed at my face, frustrated with myself. ‘They wanted the scroll-case.’

Wyr smiled nastily. ‘It was good of you to make it so easy for me.’

‘And Addie?’

‘The unicorn? Anything else I could get off you I could keep. That was the deal.’

‘Except the scroll-case?’ I growled. ‘Did you hand that over, or did you keep it?’

Wyr opened his mouth, and shut it again.

I found that Emellana was looking gravely at me. ‘You’ve an idea?’ I said to her.

‘I think it is a good thing that Wyr has crossed our path again.’

I blinked. ‘It is?’

‘For one thing, it seems clear that the scroll-case may be important. If Mr. Wyr no longer has it, he is one of the few people who knows where it is.’

‘All right.’

‘He may also be one of the few people who knows where Torvaston’s hideaway is to be found.’

‘How do you figure that?’

‘Why were you hired?’ she said to Wyr. ‘You’re some kind of treasure hunter, aren’t you?’

‘It’s a nicer name than “thief”, I’ll give you that,’ said Wyr.

‘You know all the old stories, especially those pertaining to ancient magick and potent artefacts. And you’ve made it your life’s business to track them down. You’re clearly on the best of terms with the traders up at Vale.’

‘What’s your point?’ said Wyr.

‘You know where Torvaston’s hideaway is because you’ve been there. Ancestria Magicka probably hired you for that very purpose.’

Wyr examined his fingernails. ‘I hate to contradict you when you’re being so charmingly complimentary, but you’re giving me too much credit. I haven’t been in there, because no one has.’

‘No one?’

‘No. The entrance is known, but what’s behind it remains a mystery because no one can open the damned door. Believe me. I’ve tried.’

‘The scroll-case,’ I said. ‘Is that why you wanted it?’

‘I don’t imagine you noticed,’ said Wyr, ‘because it’s faded, and camouflaged to boot. But there’s a mark on that map just about exactly where the entrance is. Coincidence? I think not.’

‘So you think something about the scroll-case either opens the door, or could explain how.’

‘We’re hoping so.’

By “we”, I supposed he meant his crummy employers, too.

But.

‘The case itself?’ I said. ‘Or something, perhaps, that was in it.’

I had the satisfaction of having, finally, disconcerted Wyr. ‘There was something in it?’ he said, looking in disbelief at me.

‘When we found it, yes.’

‘And you did what with the contents, exactly?’

‘That would be my business.’ I looked at the Baron. Hopefully my eyes said: Tell me you brought the fork, the watch and the snuff box.

Hopefully his smile said, Of course I did.

For once, Wyr appeared to have nothing to say.

I smiled. If he’d trotted off to Fenella Sodding Beaumont with that scroll-case and imagined he’d solved the mystery, he was in for a disappointment. They all were.

Provided, of course, that I was right, and it wasn’t the case itself that held the secret.

Was it madness to gamble the entire success of our mission on the probability that a silver fork, a gilded pocket-watch and a questionably-decorated snuff box held the key to a lost enclave that generations had failed to penetrate?

Yes.

But madness is kind of my style.

‘Well,’ I said to Wyr. ‘You’d better throw in your lot with us.’

‘What?’ said Jay.

‘Why?’ said Wyr.

‘Because that case isn’t going to get either you or Ancestria Magicka very far without its contents. And that means we’ve a much better chance of getting in than any of the rest of you.’

‘Therefore?’

‘Therefore, showing us the door is likely to work out better for your greedy little dreams.’

‘Right,’ said Wyr. ‘You’re just going to turn me loose in there and let me grab whatever I want. Sure.’

‘There’s one thing in there that we want. I don’t think we need to care too much about the rest. Anything merely materially valuable is yours.’ If we didn’t manage to put a sock in him somewhere between here and the other side of that long-sealed door, anyway. I didn’t give a crap about jewels and courtly goblets and what the hell else. I just wanted Torvaston’s failed moonsilver project, and the books.

‘Ves…’ said Miranda, doubtfully.

‘Got a better idea?’

She hesitated. ‘No.’

‘Me neither.’

Nor did anyone else, judging from the silence. Alban, to my delight, exuded a serene confidence in my judgement that I found highly gratifying.

I hoped it wasn’t just a pretence.

‘You’re on,’ said Wyr at last, and held out his hand to me.

I crossed to where he still dangled in Emellana’s grip, and shook it. ‘One thing,’ I said. ‘If you screw us over again, Emellana and the Baron will have you for dinner.’

‘We like meat,’ Alban offered, with a friendly smile.

Wyr gave him a sour look. ‘Got it.’

Emellana didn’t so much set him down as drop him from a great height.

‘Ouch,’ said Wyr, and picked himself up. ‘Thanks for that.’

‘Just deserts,’ said Em.

I did so like her style.

Jay sidled my way. ‘Where did all that come from?’ he said in an undertone.

‘About the contents of the case?’ I whispered back. ‘Do you recall much about the history of table etiquette?’

‘Not… really.’

‘I was forgetting it myself, until just now. See, we saw a metal utensil with a handle and twin prongs and immediately connected it with tableware. And it does resemble an early fork. But the fork didn’t come into common use in western Europe until the eighteenth century, and this thing has to be like a century and a half older than that.’

‘It isn’t a fork!’

‘Exactly. Also, the pocket-watch isn’t so badly out of place, except that it has two hands. Early ones had only an hour hand.’

‘So it… isn’t telling the time?’

‘Might be. Might be tracking something else entirely.’

‘And the box?’

I shrugged. ‘Snuff was coming into fashion by the early sixteen hundreds, so it could just be a snuff box. Then again, maybe not. And there’s no saying that it was used to hold snuff, even if it is.’

Jay grinned. ‘Who knew a taste for historical trivia could be so useful.’

‘Well, me. It’s not like it’s the first time.’

‘The secret of your success?’

I thought about that. ‘Yes,’ I decided. ‘It pretty much is.’

‘That feeling,’ said Wyr, attempting to writhe out of my grip, ‘is not mutual.’

‘That’s too bad,’ I said, handing him off to Emellana. He didn’t stand much chance of getting away from her. ‘What are you doing here? And where’s our scroll-case?’

‘I sold it,’ he said, eyeing Em with distaste. ‘Obviously. What else would I do with it?’

‘Take an interest in a certain map that was drawn on it, by chance?’

‘What map.’

‘Ah. So your appearance up here is a coincidence.’

‘Apparently.’ He smiled at me, and flicked the brim of his hat.

I felt like sweeping that hat off him and hurling it (or him) off the peak.

‘Look, this is not going to fly. You’ve some kind of interest in the Hyndorin Mountains, and if you don’t speak up, Em’s going to break you into pieces and feed you to the birds.’ I’d seen a few large ones sailing overhead, birds of prey by the looks of them.

Wyr surveyed Emellana, unimpressed. ‘She’s big, but old ladies don’t tend to scare— argh!’

I don’t know what Em did, but obviously it hurt. She looked at him, cold as winter, and said, ‘Talk.’

‘I don’t—’ said Wyr, but this unpromising beginning was interrupted by a shimmer and a ripple of magick, emanating from the stony henge. Someone was coming through.

A tall figure appeared. Troll-tall, broad-shouldered, and achingly familiar. He paused only for a split second in the centre of the henge, and made as if to go away again — then saw me, and stopped dead. ‘Ves.’

A moment later, Baron Alban was bearing down on me with obvious intent to hug. Ruthlessly.

Remembering, in the nick of time, my uncuddleable state, I took a few hasty steps back. ‘Alban?’ I said, in disbelief. ‘Great. Now I’m hallucinating.’

‘Nope,’ said Jay succinctly.

Emellana smiled at the vision. ‘Highness.’

‘You’re really here,’ I said. ‘How.’

Alban stopped a few feet from me, uncertainty replacing the relief on his face. ‘Long story,’ he said.

‘It’s not you,’ I tried to explain, regretting my instinctive retreat. ‘It’s— uh, long story too.’

‘All right.’

‘You first?’

He sighed, and it struck me how weary he looked. In fact, he looked most unlike himself. He was clad in plain travelling clothes, devoid of ornaments, his head bare; the attractive, bluish-green tones of his skin and bronzed hair were gone, and he was merely brown-haired, with lightly tanned skin. It would be like me showing up in jeans and an old t-shirt, with my natural hair colour showing. ‘Is everything all right?’ I added.

‘It is now,’ he said, smiling at me, and he was the same old Alban again, even if rather less well turned-out. He looked around at Em and Jay and Miranda, and focused with a frown on Wyr. ‘Since you all appear to be hale and in one piece… who’s that?’

‘Our nemesis,’ I said. ‘Apparently.’

Wyr, visibly more disconcerted by the Baron’s presence than by Emellana’s, said nothing.

To my dismay, Alban swayed on his feet, and quickly sat down — outside the range of the henge. He held up a hand as I started forward. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve just been through one too many henges today, that’s all.’

‘As in, how many?’

‘As in, I’ve been travelling the Ways since last night trying to find you.’

‘All night? Why? What’s happened?’

‘Nothing terrible,’ he said, seeing the alarm in my face. ‘Or at least, probably not. Everyone at home is well. But some new information came to light shortly after you left, and I thought you needed to know about it.’ His gaze strayed to Wyr.

‘Can you bottle him up?’ I said to Em.

‘Gladly.’

‘Wait—’ said Wyr, then clapped his hands to his ears and made a disgusted face. ‘DEAF?’ he thundered. ‘GREAT. THANKS.’

‘It was that or an incomprehension charm,’ said Em with a faint smile. ‘Perhaps he’d prefer to hear everything in Swahili.’

‘I like this approach,’ I said. ‘Simple. Effective.’

Em inclined her head.

‘Can we leave it on him all the time?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Muting charm?’

‘No.’

‘Damn.’

‘Though I quite see the appeal.’

We all looked expectantly at Alban.

‘It’s two things,’ he said, shaking his head as though to clear it. ‘Firstly, Mother accelerated the translation process on Torvaston’s papers. She seconded half a dozen language scholars from anywhere she could get them. Certain research projects at the University have ground to a halt, but we got the document finished. Did you know — or guess — that Torvaston had made himself into a kind of human griffin?’

I blinked. ‘A what?’

‘I don’t mean half bird, or something like that. I’m not expressing this well.’

Small wonder, if he’d been criss-crossing back and forth between henge complexes for twelve hours straight. Or more. My unease grew. ‘Carry on.’

‘It’s more the way griffins operate, in the magickal sense. You know, how they function as a source of magick, increase its potency in areas they populate, that kind of thing.’

‘Got it. So Torvaston was doing the same thing?’

‘Not just Torvaston. Do you remember that odd kind of… ritual you read about, at Farringale? From the diary? Where members of the Court went up to the top of the peak and, um, absorbed some of the griffins’ excess magick.’

‘Yes.’

‘They were doing that to try to curb the overflow, or so we suppose, and that’s probably true, but did you consider the probable long-term effects of that?’

‘Sort of—’

‘Or how it was done?’

‘Sort of,’ I said again. ‘It’s all been speculation.’

‘Well, they had… tools, whether they knew it or not. A certain kind of metal — we don’t know what it was, except that it was called magickal silver by Torvaston in his book — has a property which permits it to soak up magick like a sponge. And that happened to be a fashionable material at the Court of Farringale. Everyone who was anyone had at least a trinket made from the stuff.’

‘Go on.’

‘There’s no known source of that metal anymore, and most examples of objects made from the stuff have passed out of existence or knowledge. Most.’ He looked at me.

I had no trouble seeing where this was going. ‘So they absorbed… too much magick,’ I said faintly.

He shrugged. ‘Maybe. Whatever the cause, the general effect the griffins had on Farringale spread to many members of the Court, too. Which was like… quadrupling the griffin population of Farringale in the space of a number of years. You can imagine the outcome.’

‘That’s how Farringale was flooded?’

‘Probably. Torvaston’s notes stop before the crisis, so we can’t be sure, but the pieces fit.’

I felt saddened, somewhere under my unease. Torvaston’s desperate attempts to mend Farringale had most likely contributed to its demise. We’d speculated about just such a possibility, but I was sorry to have it largely confirmed.

‘But,’ said Jay. ‘But. What did they imagine they were doing with the excess magick? Absorbing it, however it was done, doesn’t just make it go away.’

He was looking at me as he said that last part, and indeed I was functioning as living proof of that concept.

‘Indeed not,’ said Alban. ‘Torvaston had a dual problem on his hands. He could see that Farringale was in danger of magickal excess — but he also had, we think, a touch of clairvoyance about him. His notes refer, more than once, to a “decline” he foresaw happening somewhere in the future. It seems he was attempting to manage a project which would solve both problems at once—’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Somehow using the dangerously excessive magick of Farringale to balance out the decline that was beginning elsewhere?’

‘Something like that,’ Alban agreed. ‘He began buying up all this magickal silver he could get his hands on. Almost bankrupted the royal family to do it, too. And he drew in all the brightest magickal minds he could get hold of in an attempt to build… some kind of device.’

‘A device?’

‘See, the problem with the flows of magick being under the influence of living creatures is that they can’t be… managed, very well. They breed too much, or they die off, and disasters happen. Either the enclave is flooded out, or its magick dries up and the place just dies. Torvaston wanted a solution that could be carefully maintained, and that meant a non-biological one.’

Jay said, ‘So he was building a… regulator.’

‘Right.’

‘Out of moonsilver. Or skysilver, or whatever the Yllanfalen call it.’

Alban looked oddly at him. ‘You guessed that part.’

Jay just looked meaningfully at me.

‘I was hoping,’ said Alban, ‘that the lyre hadn’t—’

‘It has,’ I said. ‘I used it. I’m sorry.’

He looked me over, more carefully, and I felt the faint brush of his magick against mine. ‘Then I am too late,’ he said heavily.

‘Hey,’ I said, trying for brightness. ‘I’m still alive.’

‘It’s not that it’s deadly,’ said Alban, with a smile probably meant to be reassuring. ‘Just… difficult to manage. Or reverse.’

‘It does have its drawbacks,’ I said lightly.

‘And that’s probably why the whole lot of them fled over here,’ he continued. ‘They would have felt less painfully overwrought, in a more potently magickal landscape. And they would have been less of a danger themselves. This is why they didn’t join Her Majesty at Mandridore.’

And I sighed. If I’d hoped Alban would have some solution that said, You CAN go home, Ves! I was doomed to disappointment. ‘Why didn’t they throw away that damned magickal silver,’ I said, somewhat sourly.

He smiled at me. ‘Have you thrown away that lyre?’

‘Fair point.’

‘Magick has ever been seductive. Anything that can promise to amplify its potency, very much so.’

I couldn’t disagree. ‘And there’s the whole question of dependency.’

‘True.’

Which, secretly, bothered me the most. Swimming as I was in magick up to my very eyeballs, would it even be possible to go back to the way I was before? Would I… miss it? Would I need it? Had I, in fact, been turned into a raging magickal alcoholic overnight?

It didn’t bear thinking about. Because I had a horrible feeling that I would.

‘Okay, anyway,’ I said briskly, setting these unproductive ideas aside. ‘Do we know what became of Torvaston’s magickal regulator?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Alban. ‘We don’t know if the project succeeded. If it did… the thing might still be at the old court, of course, but then presumably the disaster there would never have happened.’

‘Baroness Tremayne would surely have said something about that, if it was,’ I said. ‘If she knew about it.’

‘She probably didn’t. Torvaston seems to have kept that particular project quiet, hence spending his family’s money on it instead of the Court’s.’

‘Would he have left it behind?’ said Jay.

‘That’s the thing we were thinking,’ said Alban, shaking his head. ‘If he had to leave our Britain, it seems far-fetched to imagine he’d abandon his life’s work. And where better to complete so ambitious a project, but here?’

‘Ohh,’ I said, and stood straighter, electrified. ‘It’s here.’

‘Specifically, probably, somewhere in those very mountains you’re looking for,’ said Alban. ‘If it wasn’t in Vale.’

‘How do you know we already went to Vale?’

He grinned. ‘Because I went up there first. Something about the trail of disaster and chaos I found struck me as very Ves-like.’

I blushed. ‘It was necessary.’

‘It always is.’

‘So we’re looking for Torvaston’s masterpiece,’ I said hurriedly. ‘A thing which, if it had ever worked, could’ve saved Farringale.’

‘And which could save countless other enclaves,’ said Alban. ‘Both those over-flooded with magick, and those starving to death without it.’

My eyes widened. ‘This is big.’

‘Very. And there’s one more thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You aren’t the only ones.’

‘What?’

Almost imperceptibly, he winced. ‘That’s the other thing I needed to tell you. There was a… spy uncovered, at Mandridore.’

‘Uh oh.’

‘Um, more than one. We’ve reason to think somebody gained access to these papers some time ago, may have had opportunity to translate at least parts of it. And someone, probably the same someone, had been trying very hard to get their hands on that scroll-case from Farringale.’

‘Let me guess,’ I said, with sinking heart. ‘Someone with ties to Ancestria Magicka.’

‘Bingo. And, Ves, I think they’re already here.’

Of course they were. It was the answer to every question I’d ever asked myself about Fenella Beaumont’s motives, or Ancestria Magicka’s aims.

The mere thought of such an artefact falling into those hands brought me out into a cold sweat.

And they were, once again, way ahead of us.

‘Giddy gods,’ I said faintly. ‘We’re doomed.’