by Ashdown Castle was gone.
Believe me, I checked thoroughly. I don’t know where I thought Zareen might have managed to hide a huge medieval castle-manor on an open beach, but I trawled up and down the sand anyway, twice over, before I was prepared to concede that it really wasn’t there.
This was good, for it meant (hopefully) that Zareen had succeeded in finding a better, permanent home for the place. Considering its weight, it really shouldn’t have been left any longer on sandy ground.
It was bad because that meant Zareen and George were nowhere within reach.
So much for our easy (maybe) link to Miranda.
We made a slightly forlorn group for a moment there, Emellana and Jay and Adeline and I, faced with the utter absence of an entire castle, and our friends with it.
Well, Jay and I did. Adeline attempted to eat a crab, and swiftly regretted it. Emellana maintained an enigmatic silence.
‘I suppose Melmidoc might know something,’ I offered, half-heartedly.
‘Do you think Zareen was much in contact with him?’ said Jay.
‘Not really.’ Zar wasn’t the type for dutiful check-ins, especially with someone she would consider wholly uninvolved with her business, and therefore irrelevant. ‘But it’s somewhere to start. Even if he doesn’t know, he can help. I mean, where would Miranda go, if she’d stayed here?’
‘Wherever the rarest magickal beasts are,’ said Jay promptly.
‘Right. And Melmidoc would know that, for sure.’
‘You are trying to find a colleague?’ said Emellana.
I grimaced. ‘Ex-colleague.’
Emellana’s raised brow invited elucidation, which I provided. It made for a surprisingly brief story.
‘Why do you need her?’ said Emellana, gazing thoughtfully over the sea.
‘We don’t,’ I said, with a ferocity that surprised even me.
Jay gave a slight cough. ‘Milady insisted upon it.’
‘And you always do what Milady requires.’
‘Not… always,’ honesty compelled me to admit. ‘But mostly. And she is right about Miranda’s expertise. If we find griffins or unicorns, we may be glad of her presence.’ Maybe.
Emellana said nothing. Her silence proved more eloquent than any counter-argument might have been.
I watched her for a moment. Her serenity was… slightly unnerving. I mean, here we were on the mythical fifth Britain, a place even the Court at Mandridore had known nothing about until recently. A place overflowing with magick, brimming with all the lost arts and artefacts and beasts we could only dream of. I was itching to get off the isle of Whitmore, at last, and explore what lay on the mainland beyond the sea. Jay, I knew, was feeling the same.
Emellana Rogan, however, was… unimpressed. She stared out over the sea as though it were just a sea, any sea, and not teeming with magick and probably full of selkies and mermaids and naiads and… ooh, what if there were mermaids down there?
There could be.
‘Jay! Do you think there are mermaids in those waters?’ I said.
He gave me the side-eye. ‘No idea. Let’s pop down and check.’ He started to remove his boots.
I grabbed his arm. ‘Not now. Later.’
His eyes grew wide. ‘You’re actually serious.’
‘Weren’t you? Oh.’ Abashed, I folded my arms, and attempted to mimic Emellana’s cool, wordless stare over the water. A balmy sea-breeze blew back my hair. ‘I knew that.’
Jay grinned. ‘Do you want to try the stocking trick or not?’
‘The wha— oh.’ In the bustle and confusion of departure, I’d managed to forget about Miranda’s stocking. I dragged it out of my pocket, and cast about for the pup.
She was thirty metres up the beach, snout down in the sand, digging furiously.
‘Hey, she’s found something,’ I said, and set off after her at a trot.
Jay followed after. ‘Imagine what it could be. A gold crown studded with jewels. A priceless gemstone Wand. A cache of selkie’s pearls.’
‘Now you’re teasing me,’ I said with dignity.
He laughed. ‘Someday, one of your wild ideas will turn out to be true, and you’ll have the last laugh.’
‘Not this time,’ I said mournfully, for having scooped up the pup (to her loudly-voiced dissatisfaction) I discovered her unearthed treasure to be… a coin.
I picked it up. ‘They’re still using shillings,’ I said, showing it to Jay. It was bright and new, and obviously had not spent long buried in the sand.
‘No new money? Interesting.’ Jay stuck it in his pocket. ‘About ten thousand more of those and we’ll be rich. Good job, Goodie.’
I attempted to interest my writhing little friend in Miranda’s stocking, but her response to it was to sneeze heartily, three times in quick succession. I set her down in the sand, hoping she might take off in pursuit of our missing ex-colleague, but she only sat on her haunches, ears drooping.
‘To be honest, I’d probably react the same way,’ said Jay.
‘Her pure little heart beats only for filthy lucre,’ I said with a sigh, and put the stocking away again.
Emellana joined us at a casual stroll, her large hands pushed into her coat pockets. It was a little nippy on the beach. ‘We appear to have an imminent visitor,’ she said, and pointed up the cliff.
Poised upon the edge was a familiar, pale spire, its walls twinkling faintly blue. ‘I suppose it was too much to expect we could show up here without Melmidoc finding out about it,’ I said.
‘Especially if we park the car right next door,’ said Jay.
‘There is that.’ The spire loomed far up there, an obvious summons. Was he coming down, or were we expected to go up?
I waited, but the spire did not move again.
‘Righto, then,’ I said, and trudged off in the direction of the winding path upwards. ‘Let’s find out what Melmidoc knows about the Vales of Wonder and the Something Mountains.’
The spire’s heavy door swung slowly inwards as we approached, with an ominous creaking noise.
I don’t know why I found this essentially inviting gesture intimidating.
‘Good morning, Mr. Redclover,’ I said, extra brightly to cover my unease. ‘We—’
You took them all away, Melmidoc thundered, cutting me off. Is that not what you promised?
‘What?’ I blurted, taken aback. ‘Who? You don’t mean… Ancestria Magicka?’
The interlopers, and their inappropriately sized conveyance.
‘The castle’s gone now,’ said Jay helpfully. ‘We checked.’
And its occupants? said Melmidoc.
‘Do you mean George?’ I suggested. ‘He stuck with Zareen, but only to get the castle moved. They should both be—’
Who in the blazes is George? thundered Melmidoc.
I suppose that answered my question as to whether Melmidoc knew what had become of Zareen.
‘Who have you seen?’ I said.
That woman.
‘More specifically?’ My thoughts went to Zareen first, then Miranda. Neither seemed to deserve such an epithet.
About her, there is the arrogance of a born leader.
Definitely not Zareen or Miranda. ‘You cannot mean… Fenella Beaumont?’ I said.
Emellana stiffened beside me. ‘That woman.’
My thoughts whirled. We had heard of her only once, since we’d turfed the lot of them off Whitmore. On that one occasion, she had recently made a wreck of poor Millie Makepeace.
Since then, nothing. She’d vanished. If I had given the matter much thought, I’d probably assumed she and her rotten followers were busy finding a new base of operations.
Perhaps not.
‘Just when did the castle disappear?’ I said around a growing feeling of foreboding.
Ten days ago, said Melmidoc. And you have not yet answered my question.
‘I didn’t hear a question, I heard a deal of shouting.’
Why are they returned? You claimed we were rid of them!
‘I doubt I said anything so foolish, considering we are in no way in control of their actions.’ I spoke rather absently, my mind turned upon Zareen and George and Ashdown Castle. Had they removed it, or had Fenella somehow reclaimed it? ‘Where was Fenella, when you saw her? What was she doing? Who did she have with her?’
She and three souls, Melmidoc began.
‘Oh, so only four of them, that isn’t bad—’
Four is four too many! he snapped.
‘Sorry.’
She and three souls, he said again. Skulking about the beach at night, as though we would not know!
‘What did you do?’ said Jay.
Repelled them.
I did not like the way in which he said this, suddenly cool where before he’d been ablaze with wrath. ‘Um,’ I put in. ‘What does repelling Ancestria Magicka involve?’
They are in one of the other Britains now.
‘One of them? You don’t know which?’
It is immaterial.
I swallowed. ‘Right. And was this before or after the castle vanished from the beach?’
After.
So it could still have been either Fenella or Zareen who was behind that little event. I was prepared to hope it was Zareen. What was Fenella doing “skulking” around on the beach, if she’d already retrieved her castle?
I made a mental note not to get on Melmidoc’s very bad side. We were on his somewhat bad side already; any more, and we’d be expelled to some other Britain in Fenella’s wake. Which one was she on? Was it one that had banned all magick, or one of the ruined ones?
‘We are very sorry,’ I said hastily. ‘We did not imagine she would find the means to return so soon.’
So soon? You knew it was likely to occur eventually?
‘She’s tenacious. It would take more than an ignominious banishment and a dose of amnesia to put her off.’
Perhaps a second ignominious banishment will be sufficient.
I privately thought not, supposing she managed to return from whichever Britain she was now skulking about on.
‘Do you know how she got here?’ said Emellana.
Madam, I believe we are unacquainted.
I sighed inwardly. Melmidoc was ever irascible.
‘So we are,’ said Emellana mildly. ‘I am Emellana Rogan, scholar and Lady of the Court on the sixth Britain.’
‘New Court,’ I put in quickly. ‘Not Farringale.’
Emellana raised a brow at me.
‘Melmidoc has a few issues with the Old Court,’ I supplied.
I felt him glower. I cannot bid you welcome, madam, said he waspishly. You are uninvited.
‘It was quite rude of me,’ Emellana agreed. ‘There is some urgency about our errand.’
I rubbed at my eyes. Was that a headache coming on, already? ‘Em, Melmidoc Redclover died about four centuries ago. Before that, he was one of the most visionary magickers of his age. He and his brother built this place, and pioneered the kind of advanced Waymastery that permits travel back and forth between Britains.’
Emellana made a kind of bow. ‘An honour.’
Your errand? said Melmidoc. Still waspish, but, perhaps, slightly mollified.
‘We seek the Vales of Wonder,’ said Emellana.
There was a pause. To what end? said Melmidoc at length.
Emellana looked at me.
Here was the tricky part. How to tell Melmidoc that we were in pursuit of the last king of Farringale? He could hardly welcome such news. He’d spit, and snarl, and refuse to help. I’d have to handle him delicately, manage him very carefully, turn a deaf ear to his sarcastic commentary…
Ah, screw it.
‘We’re looking for the last king of Farringale,’ I said.
