I could see two choices opening before us. We could go back to Mandridore and raid the libraries there for more information about magickal surges, griffins, and now the founding of the new Court. Or we could stay on the fifth, and see if we could uncover the truth about the supposed arrival of Torvaston the Second from the sixth. The latter posed a few problems. If nobody knew where they were said to have gone, where did we start looking?
‘Mel, if we wanted to dig into these rumours, where would you suggest we go?’
If my memory does not betray me, answered Melmidoc — gliding past my abbreviation of his name, this time — I received these rumours from the lips of a travelling storyteller. In those days, they were a common sight. They wandered from town to town, telling tales in exchange for food or ale or coin. They brought gossip, too, and the news from parts far distant, though I have often suspected them of fabricating events altogether for the sake of a wage. There are not so many, now, but a handful remain. They make a virtue of the power of tales which I, I confess, do not wholly share, but since it has lead them to keep meticulous accounts of the stories, rumours and half-truths they have told down the ages, it is not without its uses.
‘So there is a repository somewhere?’ I said, encouraged.
I believe there are paper records, as I believe you are thinking of, but this practice was not begun until much more recently than the period we are interested in. I do not think it would be of much assistance to you.
‘That’s disappointing.’
However. There is a wild tale the storytellers like to say of themselves. It is not a simple matter to take up the profession; it is accounted among the many magickal arts, and there is a long process of learning and practice involved. When a new storyteller completes this process and takes on the mantle of tale-bearer, it is said that they receive full knowledge of all the tales that have gone before.
Melmidoc’s tone became more and more sceptical as he spoke.
‘You mean like a shared memory?’ Jay said.
Something of that sort. I have never felt sufficient interest to enquire into the precise workings of this supposed art. I admit to finding it improbably far-fetched. But stranger things have happened.
It was impossible to argue with such a point, standing as I was in an alternate world, chatting with the ghost of a Waymaster who had died hundreds of years before. ‘Where might we find one of these tale-bearers?’ I asked.
There are none on Whitmore at present. However, it is common for one or more to attend the Feast of Delunia here. We may yet play host to some representative of their people.
‘We can’t go home yet anyway,’ said Jay. ‘Millie won’t be ready to travel until tomorrow at the earliest.’
I chafed at the delay, wanting to talk to one of these wonderful people now, right away. ‘Is there not some way we could track one of them down?’ I asked, with faint hope.
I cannot see how. Melmidoc’s voice registered suppressed amusement. The problem with wanderers is their tendency to wander.
‘Well, then,’ said Alban, with his first real smile at me all day, ‘maybe it’s time for that little bit of feasting we were talking about.’
‘A little bit, maybe even a lot?’ I said.
‘Stranger things have happened.’
I will gloss over the events of that evening. Picture everything you like in the way of feasting and dancing, singing (yes, I admit it) and general decadence, and you’d have a fair idea of how Jay, Alban and I spent those hours. I’m not sorry either. Life’s for living.
We retired to Millie’s welcoming embrace at a shockingly late hour, only belatedly discovering that she had nothing resembling a bed among her scattered furniture. Not even one. So we divested her various chairs, couches and floors of assorted pillows, blankets and rugs, and passed out all over the floor.
It wasn’t our most dignified episode.
I woke the next morning to just a touch of a headache, and an appalling crick in my neck. ‘We should get Millie a few furniture upgrades,’ I said to Jay, who remained too comatose to make me any response.
I found Alban nursing his own headache on the porch, which was brave of him. The sun was pretty blinding by then. ‘I needed some air,’ he said to me as I joined him.
‘There’s air inside.’
‘A bit.’
You would think my stomach could’ve refrained from manifesting hunger, considering how much I had put into it the night before. It would have been the polite thing to do. But no. In fact it was roaring with distress.
‘There’s some kind of a pub two streets over,’ said Alban, grinning at me.
‘Pubs don’t serve breakfast.’
‘It’s nearer lunch by now.’
I’d switched my phone off, considering it was about as useful as a lump of rock out here. I had no idea what time it was. But considering the heat of the day, the height of the sun and the stroppiness of my empty stomach, he was probably right. ‘I’ll fetch Jay,’ I said, getting to my feet with a wince. ‘If I can.’
‘Bucket of cold water.’
‘We have no water.’
‘Ask Millie.’
‘Good idea.’
Millie had no water either, but she managed a creditable alternative. Her rickety old spinet sidled over to where Jay lay prone, and struck up a thundering concerto. Millie sang along with it, with a presumably improvised song about sleeping beauty. It wasn’t half bad.
Jay was insufficiently appreciative. He woke with a start, squinted blearily at the spinet’s keys as they riotously played themselves, and lunged for it with a groan. ‘Stop,’ he begged, laying his arms over the keys to hold them down. ‘Please, stop.’
Millie was undeterred.
‘I do believe you’ve killed him,’ I said, as Jay sank to the floor with a groan and, to all appearances, died.
Millie stopped at once. Mr. Patel?
No response.
I kicked him.
‘I’m alive,’ he said weakly. ‘No thanks to you.’
‘How does breakfast sound?’
‘Terrible.’
‘Coffee?’
His eyes opened. ‘You could interest me in that.’
I held out a hand to him. ‘Up you get. We’re leaving in three minutes.’
‘Only three?’ Jay grasped my hand and allowed himself to be hauled to his feet, very much at my expense. I definitely don’t have the kind of heft necessary for dragging grown men about.
‘Four would be more than my delicate constitution could bear.’ I patted my stomach.
‘Ha.’ Vertical again, Jay swayed unpromisingly, but managed not to collapse. ‘You’re about as delicate as a steel girder.’
‘Is that a compliment?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is it an insult?’
Jay thought about it. ‘Nope.’
‘Then I’ll take it.’
An hour and a solid sandwich later — not to mention three cups of tea — I was feeling rather better. Even Jay looked more alive than dead after he’d imbibed a vat or two of coffee. Alban, I concluded, was some kind of demigod, and as such wholly impervious to the effects of alcohol. Or maybe he was just big.
It was as we were preparing to leave that a commotion erupted in the street outside. The music had not begun again yet, to my relief, for I was not yet up to a renewed onslaught of bone-creaking beat. But into the general quiet came the sound of distant drums beating, rapidly coming closer. The rhythm caught my attention and held it; the sounds carried the promise of excitement with them, of colour and entertainment and nameless, but desirable things, and I was seized by an urge to run after whoever was playing those drums.
I recognised a wisp or two of magick at work in all this.
Out we trooped onto the street. We were not the only ones thus affected by the music; the wide road was rapidly filling with people streaming towards the drum beats, all palpably excited about something.
I thought I heard the word “tale
-bearer” as a knot of children ran breathlessly past.
‘Seems promising,’ I said, and trotted towards the music.
The drummer was a giant, stomping up the road with thundering footsteps, a gigantic drum slung around his neck. He beat upon the skins with his enormous fists, and the sounds echoed off the stones of the street, improbably amplified. I liked the look of him. He wore a long, sweeping coat in my very favourite colour (purple), a wide-brimmed hat over his thatch of straw-coloured hair, and his weathered face was wreathed in smiles.
Next to him trotted a woman as tiny as the drummer was tall. She was fae, perhaps from one of the sylph tribes, considering the way her feet barely seemed to touch the ground. Pale and ethereal, with a wreath of lavender hair like smoke drifting around her tiny face, she practically oozed magick as she drifted up the street towards us.
I spotted a pack train: two stout ponies laden with bulging saddle-bags.
‘These look like travellers, wouldn’t you say?’ I observed to Jay.
‘Travellers and entertainers,’ he agreed.
‘Let’s go meet them.’
11
How it seems to work with storytellers is: they arrive, noisily. People among the quickly-gathering crowd begin shouting out requests for stories. The tale-bearers pick whichever suggestion best suits their fancy and, for a little while, the drums stop in favour of their voices. Jay, Alban and I watched for a little while, taking their measure, and heard a spirited tale of an ancient hero called Gostingot who stormed the strongholds of corrupt sorcerers an unspecified number of centuries ago. The storytellers were good: he with his great, rumbling, booming voice and she with her light, musical tones, they had everything.
Once Gostingot’s tale was done, the giant resumed his drumming and off they went again, collecting more of an audience, until somebody’s called-out suggestion caught their attention once more.
‘This is going to take way too long,’ I said, sotto voce.
‘Right,’ said Jay. ‘It’ll have to be kidnapping, then.’
I stared. ‘What?’
‘That is what you were going to suggest, isn’t it?’
‘Nothing quite so daring—’
‘You disappoint me. Crazy Ves is becoming positively staid.’
I punched him. But only a little bit, on the arm.
I was actually looking at Alban.
‘What?’ said his highness, eyeing me back warily. ‘I don’t like that look in your eye, Ves.’
‘We want tales of displaced royalty, don’t we? How lucky that we happen to have a displaced royal right in our very midst. And from the same source, too!’ I gave him an encouraging smile.
He sighed. ‘So I am to be sacrificed for the sake of today’s mission, am I?’
‘Only your dignity.’
‘That’s reassuring.’
A short while later, a twitch or two of my intensely magickal Sunstone Wand had pepped up the prince’s appearance. His simple, stylish attire now resembled something far grander: he had velvets and silks, a fine, billowing cape, and a golden coronet.
‘Lose the crown, Ves,’ said Alban from between gritted teeth.
‘It is a bit too much,’ Jay agreed, surveying the prince critically.
I pouted a bit, for it made a splendid addition to his bronze-blond locks, but I obeyed.
‘And I’m not sure about the cape,’ Alban added, twisting around to look at the length of it swirling behind himself. ‘Must it billow like that?’
I’d given him the magickal equivalent of a wind machine. ‘Of course it must. We want pomp, we want majesty, we want hints of unearthly powers from afar. We need these people to take you seriously.’
‘That last part is sort of what I was getting at with the billowing thing.’
‘If this were a film, you’d have all that plus a mantle of palpable power, crackling around your muscled frame like a lightning storm—’
‘Please don’t give yourself ideas, Ves.’ He rolled his shoulders, stood a bit straighter, and sighed. ‘Just don’t let anybody trip on it, all right?’
‘Will watch like a hawk,’ I promised, probably mendaciously. I was given an immediate opportunity to prove myself, however, for Ms. Goodfellow made a sudden lunge at the cape’s floating ends and closed her teeth around the half-corporeal fabric. I bonked her on the nose with the Wand and she sneezed in surprise, releasing the cape at once.
‘You’re up,’ I told Alban, and nodded in the direction of the storytellers. We had ducked into a side street as they had paused again for another tale, and by the looks of it the story was winding down.
Alban closed his eyes briefly, opened them again for the pleasure of staring daggers at me, and then walked off.
‘He’s had practice at this,’ I murmured to Jay. We watched in momentary silence as our princely prince strode, with undeniable majesty and enviable grace, across the street and approached the storytellers’ audience. Somehow, that crowd parted for him like the sea; he did not even have to slow down. When he stopped, he was mere feet away from the giant and the sylph, and he seemed to my unbelieving eye to have grown a foot taller since he’d left us. Even the giant could not make him look small.
Jay and I hastily scuttled after.
‘I, Prince Alban of Mandridore,’ he was saying, ‘have come in search of answers to an age-old mystery. My noblest of ancestors, Torvaston the Second, is said once to have visited these shores. I would know the truth of these rumours.’ The fact that Alban was adopted and therefore no relation to Torvaston was quite by the by; I approved of his creative reinterpretation of the truth. He had a flare for it.
There followed some due flattering of the tale-bearers and their superior knowledge, wisdom, etc, most of which seemed to hit the mark. When he’d finished speaking, silence fell.
I noticed the giant’s merry eyes had travelled from Alban to Jay to me, and there was a twinkle of amusement discernible there.
‘I am sorry to tell your highness,’ he said in his deep, deep voice, ‘we know no tales of a Torvaston the Second.’
Alban appeared thrown by this, for when he opened his mouth nothing came out.
‘However,’ the giant went on, his smile broadening, ‘we do mayhap know a tale of another king of the trolls, who named himself Furgidan the Dispossessed.’
I knew the word furgidan. It meant “king” in Court Algatish, the language spoken upon more formal occasions at the Troll Courts. The Dispossessed King. That sounded about right.
‘A tale of tragedy, mystery, and adventure!’ the giant went on, addressing the crowd now. ‘And it takes place right here, upon your own Whitmore! Who shall hear it?’
Happily for us, the cheering that followed said everyone quite effectively.
‘Well, then,’ said the giant. ‘Some hundreds of years ago, the said Furgidan arrived with a royal entourage of more than thirty trolls, all members of his former court. Dukes and barons and marchionesses all, they caused quite the stir, for they were clad in finery rather like their descendent here,’ (Alban’s cape billowed obligingly at these words), ‘and they made the grandest of claims! “I am a king from afar,” said Furgidan, “from Farringale, on another shore.”
The sylph took up the tale. ‘I do not know that everyone believed him, for all knew of Farringale. The splendid Court of the Trolls, rich and age-old; there could be no other. But something about these grand strangers caught at the eye, and at the heart. They had travelled long and far, for there was a weariness about them, and a melancholy.
‘Offered bread and wine, the king declined, and so did all his party. They needed no sustenance, they said, and asked nothing of those who greeted them, save for one thing only. “We come in search of a home,” said Furgidan. “Some distant place, rich in magick, where we will be of trouble to no one.”‘
‘It is not known whither the dispossessed king went,’ said the giant, beginning to play the soft rhythm on his drums that indicated the story was drawing to a close. ‘Some sa
y that he went into the south, to the Seas of Segorne and the islands there. Others trace his path deep into the North, to the Hyndorin Mountains and their Vales of Wonder. None can say for certain.
‘But a whisper once reached my ears about Furgidan the Dispossessed. It’s said that, wherever he and his courtiers made their home, they are there still. Not even the passage of centuries can defeat the lost King of Farringale.’
The tale ended there, for the giant returned to his drumming as his partner called for more requests. To my puzzlement, the drummer winked at me.
I mulled over the possible meanings of this gesture. I supposed he meant to indicate that he’d taken some liberties with the tale, which of course I had guessed. For one thing, this event — if it had taken place at all — had not happened on Whitmore, or Melmidoc would have met Furgidan the Dispossessed. Instead, only a whisper of the story had reached the Redclover brothers’ ears, which argued for a much more distant setting.
For another thing, I highly doubted that Furgidan — or rather, Torvaston — and his court were still alive somewhere, three and a half centuries later. That smacked to me of a cute way of ending a tale which, in its natural form, had no real ending at all. A twist of the storytellers’ art: a tendency to adapt the details of a story to suit the tastes of their audience.
And I didn’t want to get started on the question of how Torvaston had known of the sixth Britain when, according to Alban, his descendants knew of only three Britains, not including this one.
But what truths might we glean from the tale, having stripped away the embellishments? Some parts of it did not altogether make sense. Then again, some parts of it were highly interesting.
We went back to the library.
‘Points of interest,’ I said a little later, as I stalked shelves overflowing with history books. ‘Why were they weary? They had travelled far, yes, in the technical sense, but they hadn’t travelled long. They must have arrived by Waymaster; they hadn’t journeyed for months on foot. What was the matter with them?’
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