I hung onto Jay. ‘Unexpected,’ I remarked.
‘Any idea where we are?’ Jay asked, and that was a fair question, for I had not quite grasped that the view was wholly unfamiliar, and also notably lacking in a town. We were up somewhere high, a clifftop perhaps, and a green valley lay below us, with a pearly lagoon cutting into one side of it. In Dapplehaven we emphatically were not.
My phone rang.
Jay took the squirming pup off me, at some peril to his life, and promptly sat down on the roof. Said roof was also incongruous, by the by, for it was not a barn roof. It was instead rounded, with a peak in the middle, and covered in slate pieces. Also, the window we had climbed through was gone.
I dug out my phone. ‘Val,’ I said, perhaps a bit shakily. ‘This is a bad time.’
‘Is your life in imminent danger?’ said she crisply.
I tested my footing. Reasonably sound. I followed Jay’s example and sat on my haunches, and felt a bit better. ‘Probably not.’
‘Probably?’
‘I mean, we’re stuck on a roof with no way to get down, but we probably won’t die just yet.’
‘Great. Because this is important.’
Another voice cut in: Zareen’s. ‘Ves, this is way important. That cottage? The Greyer place?’
‘I remember it,’ I said drily.
‘Right, listen. I’ve tracked it everywhere I can, and I admit that it is hard to do, because of its sheer mundanity — nondescript to say the least, right? — but still. Vanishing buildings tend to attract notice, but this one has only done so patchily. In the, what, five hundred years since it began to go walkabout, there have been only a handful of recorded sightings of any vanishing building of its general description. It might have been quietly camouflaged in some unremarkable spot for a lot of that time, sure, but — get this, Ves — I did find one or two other recorded sightings of just such a cottage.’
‘And?’ I said, not following at all.
‘They date from before 1508.’
My thoughts spun. ‘1508, wasn’t that the year that Maud Greyer—’
‘Killed John Wester and stuffed him into the walls. Yes.’
‘But if Waymaster Wester was the one moving the cottage about, how could it have been moving around before that year? Are you sure it was the same place?’
‘It’s impossible to be entirely sure, but how many late medieval timber-framed dwellings do you know of that had a habit of wandering about?’
‘There could have been more. Waymasters were more common, once.’
‘They were. And it could be a different building that was spotted mid-vanishment near Colchester in 1432, or that was seen to appear out of nowhere near Ipswich in 1398. But Ves, there’s more.’
My hands were getting cold, way up high as we were, for the wind was chilly and it was growing late in the day. I gripped the phone tighter, hugged my bag closer to myself, and said as patiently as I could: ‘Go on.’
Val came back on. ‘I’ve been looking into that Spire. Did you manage to find the papers you were after?’
‘Yes, but haven’t had chance to look at them yet.’
‘Right. No tower-like building has ever been sighted moving around Britain the way the Greyer’s cottage did, and I think a place like that would attract some notice, wouldn’t you? So I went looking for any such reports from Dells or Enclaves or other magickal communities, and bingo. There are a few such cases. Did you get any description of the Spire, by chance?’
‘No. My source was a dragon of little brain, who is weak on things like details.’
‘There was a tower that used to appear in the heart of the Meyvale Dell, a predominantly sylph community, in the fifteen hundreds. It was said to be all white, but it shone blue at twilight. What does that sound like to you?’
‘Starstone, but that wasn’t developed into a building material until the early 1600s, so it can’t be.’
‘Another such tower was spotted twice on the edges of the Barraby Troll Enclave, early 1500s. And there are more such examples, Ves, going back another three centuries.’
My head spun. ‘It can’t have been starstone.’
‘Ves. Get off that roof and go through those papers. I need you to find out whether the tower your Dappledok folk called the Striding Spire was built out of starstone, which would have been brand new and exciting at the time.’
‘But—’ I stopped, confused. ‘But Val, it can’t have been starstone.’
‘Just find out, Ves. Stop overthinking it.’
I wanted to remonstrate with her some more, but she hung up on me.
Damnit.
I looked at Jay, but before I had chance to relay what Valerie and Zareen had said, he simply gave me a meaningful look and pointed down over the edge of the roof.
I inched my way thither, and peeped.
Below us stretched a tall, slender tower made from blocks of bright white stone tinged faintly with blue — a blue that would flare to brilliance when the sun went down.
I called Val back. ‘Val? I think we’ve found the Spire.’
16
‘You’ve found the Spire?’ echoed Val in disbelief. ‘The actual building itself?’
‘The actual one.’
‘Where is it?’
‘I don’t know, but we are sitting on it.’
‘…that’s the roof you’re stuck on?’
‘Right.’
‘And you don’t know where you are?’
I told her about the cottage, and the secret barn, and the window we had climbed out of. ‘I cannot tell if we are in Dappledok Dell anymore,’ I concluded. ‘I see a valley below with a lagoon in it, the latter having weird iridescent water, and I don’t remember that from the Dell. I’ve a glimpse of sea, more normal colour. And that’s it. No houses, no settlements, no sign of habitation whatsoever.’
‘Can you get down?’
‘No. Not without calling Adeline, and for one thing I am not sure she could make it to wherever we are. For another, I don’t fancy trying to get on her back while she’s hovering in mid-air about fifty feet off the ground.’
There was silence for a moment. ‘Hang on, Ves,’ said Val, and hung up.
I looked at Jay.
‘Does this kind of thing happen often?’ he asked. He had his knees drawn up to his chest and his jacket wrapped around them. We were both getting cold.
‘Predicaments of this exact type, no, but in a more general sense… constantly.’
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘There is a window,’ he said after a moment. ‘I explored a bit while you were talking. It’s on the other side, about eight feet down.’
‘Open?’
‘No. But big enough to climb through.’
That did not really augur much. Setting aside the problem of how to reach the window without falling to our deaths, what would happen if we did? Would it prove to be another window like the ones in the barn, and we’d climb through it only to end up somewhere else? I did not want to lose track of this Spire just yet.
On the other hand, we could not just sit on the roof forever, either.
‘Levitate?’ I said, without much hope. Our joint performance at that art had not covered either of us in glory earlier on.
Jay looked as dubious as I felt. ‘I think we’d die.’
‘Chances of it are high.’
‘If I die without saying goodbye to Indira, she’ll kill me.’
‘A fate worse than mere ordinary death by falling off a building, no doubt.’
‘Much worse.’ He looked around, perhaps hoping someone might have left a convenient chair on the roof somewhere. Or a bookcase, we were not picky.
‘Did you come across any loose slates while you were daringly risking a plummet to the ground?’ I asked him.
He gave me a flat stare. ‘You are not witching up a roof tile.’
‘I know it’s dangerous, but—’
‘Dangerous? Have you seen the size of these things?’ He selected one to demons
trate with, thus answering my question as to whether or not he had found any loose ones. ‘You could barely fit both feet on it,’ he said, holding the dark, aged slate up to show me. ‘It is windy up here, there is nothing to hold onto, and you would die.’
‘There is a building to hold onto!’
‘Yes. An extremely tall building, and we are at the top!’
‘I just want to use it as a levitation aid. We can inch our way down, stone by stone—’
‘How are you still alive?’ Jay had folded his arms. It’s always a bad sign when he does that.
‘Because my ideas are not as crazy as you think, and I have had a lot of practice at slightly foolhardy escapades.’
‘Slightly?’
I held out my hands for the slate. ‘What if I promise faithfully not to expire?’
He did not hand over the slate, so I set about finding another one.
This prompted a sigh from Jay. ‘Ves, I am genuinely worried about this.’
I flashed him a quick smile. ‘Me too. But it is going to take Val a while to figure out where we are, if she can at all. In the meantime, we are without food or shelter, and we can hardly sleep up here without falling off. There is only so long we can safely remain aloft, and that means we have to take a risk or two to sort ourselves out.’
With obvious reluctance, Jay passed me his roof tile. ‘I am going to thank our lucky stars that your talent for enchanting flying objects is vastly superior to your talent for levitation.’
‘Practice, Jay, not luck. Like I said, I’ve got into trouble before.’
‘Do you practice levitation, too?’
‘Constantly.’
He grinned at me, though it was a strained expression.
I took up my Sunstone Wand, and set about witching up the slate. The process was much the same, even if the object was rather different, and before long the slate was bobbing buoyantly at my feet.
My pride made it imperative to hide the frisson of panic that shot through me at the prospect of stepping onto it, so I composed my face into a fair impression of serenity, and managed the business as confidently as I could.
Jay sat not far away, hands out, poised to catch me if I somehow managed to fall in his general direction. His face was creased with worry. ‘That won’t hold your weight,’ he said.
‘I have reinforced it a bit.’ It still felt precarious, though, and Jay had been right about the wind: it buffeted me about atop the too-lightweight tile, and whenever I tried to release my grip on the roof and straighten up, I was almost blown backwards.
So I did it the graceless, undignified way, inching down the roof like a backwards crab, both hands clinging tightly to the tiles within reach. The part where I had to go over the edge was too horrible to recount in any detail. Suffice it to say that the ground yawned far, far below, I absolutely did not look down (much), and a great gust of wind caught me halfway through my descent and slammed me against the wall of the tower, almost breaking my fragile levitation aid.
But, I reached the window. Reassuringly big, it was neatly rectangular, and filled in with many small, diamond-shaped panes of glass. It was closed, and locked, and also handsome and old; I did not want to have to employ Rob’s trick, and break the whole thing.
So I finagled it. An unlocking charm, amplified by my precious Wand, did the trick; a latch clicked, and to my infinite relief, the central section of the window creaked open.
I shoved it the rest of the way, and all but fell into the room beyond. I received a faceful of dust, first of all, for the floor was thick with it — everything was thick with it. Choking, I drew a fold of my gauzy scarf over my mouth, and held a brief exploration party.
I was not back in the barn, to my relief, nor did I seem to have been transported anywhere else. The room was round-walled, and appeared to be of the right dimensions to fit the tower. Someone had made a comfortable home here, once: a matched pair of elegant, upholstered arm chairs of early seventeenth-century style stood near a stone hearth, with a low table in between. Better yet, an array of bookcases ringed the walls, all stuffed with dust-covered books. I badly wanted to peruse those, of course, but first things first: would one of those chairs fit out of the window…?
It would not, so I chose a stout oak stool which stood near the hearth and enchanted that instead. Within an agreeably short space of time, Jay stood in the tower-top room with me, and without having to brave the same death-defying stunt as I had. The pup, too, was relieved to get her paws on solid ground again, and hopped out of the bag to perform an exploratory circuit of the room, nose to the floor.
Jay still looked shaken, so I gave him a swift hug — and then moved right on to the books.
‘Melmidoc’s place?’ Jay surmised.
‘And Drystan both, I’d think, judging from the… chairs…’ I lost track of my train of thought somewhere in there, for those books. Those books! For a girl with the soul of a librarian, they were like twelve Christmases all in one. Even a cursory inspection soon revealed that they comprised a genuine trove of Treasures, spanning every age from the seventeenth century backwards. My hands shook slightly as I snapped a picture for Val. She would probably faint.
‘Ves.’ Jay came over, with a book in his hands. He had wiped most of the dust off it, and opened it to the title page. ‘What do you make of this?’
It was a genuine illuminated manuscript. That first page was painstakingly inscribed in cramped, but exquisitely neat calligraphic print, the kind that used to take monks an entire day to complete. The text was framed with images inked in gloriously vivid colours, depicting a variety of beasts that were indubitably magickal in nature, though I recognised almost none of them. Were they all extinct?
‘I had a leaf through,’ said Jay, and took a deep breath. ‘Do you see what that says?’ And he pointed to a word, prominently placed on the first page, in scrolling handwriting.
Dramary.
I couldn’t breathe.
‘Dramary?’ I squeaked. ‘Is this Dramary’s Bestiary?’
Jay just nodded. There weren’t words.
See, Dramary’s Bestiary is the kind of book people like Miranda cry themselves to sleep over. There are a scant few surviving references to it as one of the most complete examples of its type, an exhaustive dictionary of every species of magickal beast known to exist during the years it was written, most of which are no longer with us now. Those years were somewhere between 1097 and 1108, by the by, as near as we can judge. The last known copy of the book burned when Lord Torrant’s library caught fire in 1907, taking the rest of the house with it. All we have left is a few sketch copies made by Torrant’s secretary in 1904.
‘Miranda will die,’ I predicted. ‘Of pure, unadulterated joy.’
‘So will Val,’ said Jay. ‘But, Ves, it… it can’t be Dramary’s Bestiary, surely?’
‘Why not? It looks like it.’ I turned a few pages. I had seen the Torrant sketches before, and while I would need to see them again to make certain that they were a match for this book, I was fairly convinced. The style of the illustrations was very similar.
‘Does nothing strike you as odd about this book?’ said Jay.
‘Besides its existence at all? Not really.’
‘It’s too new. Look at it.’ Jay showed me its binding, which was, to be fair, unusually sound for a thousand year old book. The colours, too, were scarcely faded, and the ink still quite dark. It looked aged, but in a way that suggested it had been sitting on a shelf for a few centuries, not a millennium.
I exchanged a long, considering look with Jay, and some of Val’s words floated back through my mind.
Earlier on, faced with the problem of risking a potentially fatal descent from the roof of the Striding Spire, or dying of exposure on top of it, I had not fully focused on everything that Val had said. But I did then.
There was the problem of the starstone, and the starstone Spire’s apparent sightings well before that ought to have been possible.
There
was the fact that the Spire itself had been spotted at various intervals down a number of centuries, though everything we had learned about it suggested it had only been built in the early seventeenth century.
There was Zareen’s report about the Greyer cottage and its similar patterns of movement — and the fact that it had, to all appearances, been nowhere at all for considerable periods of time.
And then that book.
‘My bag,’ I said. ‘I need Mauf.’
Jay pointed silently to the window, beneath which he had deposited my ever-present shoulder bag. I hauled Mauf out of it and said breathlessly: ‘Mauf, those books and such you were canoodling with earlier. Did you get chance to, er, find out what they know?’
‘I did not have full opportunity to absorb every word, Miss Vesper, but I believe I acquired the majority.’
‘Magnificent you. Tell me one thing: is there anything in there to confirm when the building known as the Striding Spire was built?’
‘There was not.’
My heart sank with disappointment.
‘There was, however, reference to a building called the Starstone Spire, which was built in 1611.’
My heart almost stopped with excitement. ‘Mauf! Who built it?’
‘Its construction was ordered by Drystan Redclover, Mayor of Dappledok Dell, though it is noted that his brother Melmidoc was as active a participant in the process as the Mayor.’
‘Jay,’ I said, and my voice shook. ‘In your Waymaster training, did you ever hear tell of a time when Waymasters could — could cross large expanses of time as well as distance?’
‘Never.’ Jay was clutching the Bestiary like it was his new born first child, and I noticed his hands were shaking too. ‘Ves, if that was ever true, it would be the kind of discovery that… hell, it would set the world on fire.’
17
‘Oh, it would,’ I agreed. ‘And that would give, for example, the Hidden Ministry strong reason to keep it secret, wouldn’t you say?’
‘No wonder Val had a hard time digging anything up.’
The pup jumped up onto one of the chairs and lay down in a cloud of dust. I could almost swear that she winked at me. ‘The Greyer cottage. John Wester was a more powerful Waymaster even than we thought, Jay, for that cottage — it must have taken a jaunt back a few centuries, and quite recently.’
The Striding Spire Page 12
