by ‘I don’t think you’ll like what I’m going to do with it,’ I felt obliged to add, as Jay’s face broke into a smile of relief.
The smile vanished. ‘All right, break it to me gently.’
‘No time.’ The sight of so many of Fenella’s people guarding the bridge had rattled me. What were they doing in there, that required so heavy a defence? The Society would be arriving any time now—they’d got royal permission to use the old troll roads; they’d be practically flying along—and they needed to be able to get straight in. I didn’t have time to negotiate with Jay.
By the time those two terse words left my lips, I was already at work. The gate was entirely defunct—no surprise there. I couldn’t tell what had functioned as the portal, long ago; probably a boulder or some other, like object, those were popular choices. Doubtless it had been cleared away when Farringale was sealed up. Nothing remained, then, for me to reawaken, and I had neither the time nor the knowledge necessary to create a fresh new gate here.
But we had encountered a similar problem recently, and I’d solved it. Inadvertently, yes, by way of an involuntary burst of magick I did not immediately know how to replicate. But if I’d done it once I could do it again.
I did as I had then, and sat down, putting the greater part of myself in direct contact with the ancient earth and its faded memory of magick. Not so difficult, really, to imagine myself a part of it; to lose myself in the peaceful sway of verdure, the soft and sharp smells of loam and sap; to join the dulcet notes of my lyre and my magick to those lacing the landscape around me. I heard, and felt, Jay shift beside me: an attempt to stop me, hastily suppressed. He would guess what I proposed to do, wouldn’t like it; would nonetheless accept, as I had, that the need was great and options few. I felt a stab of compunction as he settled again, and I turned my attention from him: how often had I cast him into torments of worry on my behalf? How often had I outraged his sense of caution, worn out his patience, ignored his fears—I’m sorry, Jay, I thought distantly, but I couldn’t say so, couldn’t even think about it right then, for I was shifting—bleeding into the landscape bit by bit—soon I was scarcely Ves any longer, naught left of me but a stray wisp of awareness, like a dream fraying away upon the wind.
***
It happened fast. Too fast. One minute she was Ves, seated at my feet, smiling apologetically at me with that damned lyre in her lap and magick wreathing round her like moths to a flame—and then she was gone, and there sat a Ves-sized rock, a craggy old boulder that looked for all the world as though it had been there since the dawn of time.
No ordinary boulder, of course. This one had motes of a purplish crystal laced through it, with flecks of silver—and, incidentally to its appearance, a profound magick about it, as old as Farringale itself (apparently) and very much functional.
‘A Fairy Stone,’ I sighed, and felt a stab of pain lance through my temples: a migraine on the approach. Perfect.
‘Okay,’ I said, and laid a hand against the cool, rough stone where Ves’s head had so recently been. ‘It’s okay. I’ll get you out of this—later.’
The incident with the chair, not to mention the tree, had proved all too clearly that the risks of Ves’s latest methods remained considerable. She could get herself into these messes; she needed me—us—to get her out of them again.
Later. She’d done this for good reason, and the next part was my task.
I called the number Milady—Mab—had recently given me, for just this purpose. She answered in seconds. ‘Jay?’
‘We’ve got a way in,’ I said without preamble. ‘She’s done it. I’m sending you co-ordinates.’
‘Thank you.’ Brief words, but a world of relief lay behind them.
‘Hurry,’ I said. ‘And avoid the main gate. It’s heavily guarded. Don’t let them see you.’
Nothing to do, then, but wait: and worry. About the progress of Ancestria Magicka’s plans, inside Farringale where they were, for the moment, unopposed. About my colleagues at the Society, about to face a unique challenge we may or may not be truly prepared for.
Most of all, about Ves, inert at my feet, so bound up in her myriad magicks that she might not, this time, ever get out of them again.
Not the most tranquil hour of my life.
Time moved agonisingly slowly, but Milady, thankfully, didn’t. I heard sounds of approach, and tensed, alert, heart pounding—ready to defend Ves and Farringale both to the limits of my ability—but it was Rob, striding over the heath towards me looking grim as death, and around him some twelve or fifteen of our colleagues. He’d trained every one of them, I knew: they were the best of us at the direct arts. By any other name, fighting. The advance force. Of course they’d be going in first.
Rob nodded at me, and looked around, nonplussed. Expecting to see either Ves or something that obviously looked like a gate, if not both.
I indicated the Fairy Stone, and Rob stared at it, frowning. ‘Ves hasn’t gone in alone, has she? She’s extremely competent but it’s far too dangerous—’
‘That’s Ves,’ I said. ‘She’s the gate.’
Rob was silent a moment, and then said: ‘You seem to be taking it well.’
‘It does seem that way, doesn’t it?’ I answered tightly.
He gave me another terse nod, this one tinged with sympathy. ‘We’ll be quick.’
And then he was gone, one hand planted firmly atop the stone-that-was-Ves, once. Magick surged as the members of his unit went in after him, one after another in a steady stream. By the time they were through, another group were arriving, and streaming into Farringale; faces blurred together as they went by me, too many to note, and I wondered whether it hurt Ves, whether she was even aware. She was strong, but she’d only done this sort of thing for a few of us before; now for fifty, seventy, a hundred…
Milady was among the last to arrive. Rob was her general, leading the charge: she was the shepherd, keeping everyone together, watching the rear.
She had Miranda with her, which was interesting. Miranda looked pale, tense and resolute. I wondered whether Milady kept her close out of trust, or its opposite, and perhaps she was wondering the same thing.
‘Thank you,’ Milady said again, to me, just before she went through. ‘Dear Ves. I hope she has not overreached herself.’
So strange, still, to look Milady in the face—and such a face; not young, not old, not human—more distinct by its lack, of anything I could call familiar.
Queen Mab indeed; I could have cast myself at her feet, and gladly. ‘She has,’ I answered. ‘She always does. I hope you won’t need the gate again, because I’m getting her out of there.’
Milady nodded. ‘Follow when you can,’ she said. ‘I’ll have need of you both.’
A grace period for Ves, then, albeit a small one. Good. Had I been ordered to haul her straight into the fray, I wouldn’t have been obeying it.
Milady awaited no response. In an instant she was gone, Miranda with her, leaving me alone with the inert lump of stone that was my maddening, alarming, adored and magnificent Ves.
I crouched down by her, set a careful hand to her lichen-covered surface, and spoke low and soothingly. She would be suffering, right about now. ‘I’m going through. And then we’re done. Okay? Just a couple more minutes and we’ll get you out of there.’
No response, of course: I wasn’t expecting any, though a faint hope withered and died. One last surge of magick, and magick took me, whirled me away: I entered Farringale Dell.
I looked around, oblivious to the landscape, to the knots of Society agents still in the process of disbursing. My only thought was for Ves: specifically, the appalling and impossible absence of her.
The Fairy Stone was not here.
How was that possible? Surely it could only function as a gate because it spanned the gap between the outer world, and the Dell: like a door, or a bridge. It had to be here—she had to be here—but it wasn’t. She wasn’t.
And because the stone wasn’t there—the gate wasn’t there—I couldn’t go back through and find her, either.
She was stuck, lost, and I’d lost her.
***
It occurred to me, distantly and belatedly, that we really ought to have warned Baroness Tremayne before we returned in force.
Not that the thought caused me much alarm. It’s difficult to feel distress, as a rock. There’s a stolid placidity to stone that one cannot help but absorb, even when one is only mostly a rock.
I had forgotten her altogether—Jay, too—everything, really, beyond the perimeter of my own boulder. A peaceful interlude, altogether. But a voice intruded upon my dreaming serenity, an insistent voice that vibrated through the core of me, demanding attention.
Cordelia Vesper, it said, over and over again, and I remembered that was my name.
Yes? I answered, cautiously.
Is that you?
Was I Cordelia? Distantly, I thought so. Ves, I answered. I’m Ves. I think.
Palpable relief; the voice made some wordless sound, a swiftly expelled breath. A sigh. Thank goodness. I had thought—there are so many of you.
I focused, gradually, and remembered. Many of us. Yes. Milady, and the Society, in force. It’s all right. Those are Mab’s troops. They’re here to help.
I should have said “we”, I suppose, for I, too, was there to be useful. Hopefully. But stone feels no sense of either agency or urgency, and mine were all gone somewhere. I drowsed in a lake of my own magick, lulled and sun-warmed; in seconds, I’d forgotten the baroness again.
Cordelia Vesper, came the voice again, with the insistent note of one who has repeated the same phrase several times, and failed to win a response.
I gave myself a strong mental shake. Yes! Sorry. I’m Ves.
We have established that.
Right.
Think you to remain a Fairy Stone all your days?
I thought about that, a bit. Not so terrible a prospect, honestly: quite peaceful. No? I ventured.
Your duty is fulfilled, methinks. None now linger about you, save one, at a remove.
One lingered. One! Jay must be the one.
At a remove? What does that mean?
She did not answer me, precisely, only said: Is it your wish to follow in Mab’s train?
Yes, I said, thinking of Jay more than Mab. I hesitated, struck at last by my predicament: I was a Fairy Stone, and my body seemed to think it had always been a Fairy Stone.
The same problem I’d encountered at Silvessen, not to mention the chair incident. And the tree. How easily my body and mind resigned their customary state, and adopted another’s; how difficult it was, afterwards, to think my way back into me.
Ophelia might have some idea as to why, but I didn’t. I’m stuck, I admitted. I needed Jay, or Zareen, or somebody, to pull me out of it again. And Jay was there—at a remove.
Excruciating pain, suddenly: my thoughts dissolved into agony. I felt uprooted, as though grabbed by the hair, and pulled.
And I burst out of the stone, the land, the magick, like a weed wrenched out of a vegetable patch—and woke up, screaming, to find Jay’s terrified face looming above me.
