As soon as I drew near to the rosy-lit trees, I began to see why Indira had lit them up. A suppressed shimmer of magick lay under every leaf, and when I got within twenty feet or so the trees themselves wavered like water.
You’d think this would have been warning enough. In my defence, I was probably moving too fast to stop in time anyway. Intent upon the maintenance of my rippling melody, I angled my chair in between the broad trunks of two ancient trees — and they disappeared in a flash. What I saw instead was the rugged, rocky expanse of an undeniably solid mountain rising steep and sharp before me.
I had about two and a half seconds to admire the view before I collided with it. The crunch was sickening.
I lay, spread-eagled and dazed, among the wreckage of my poor chair, blessing the shields which had — slightly — cushioned the fall. I only blazed with hurt almost everywhere.
‘Pup?’ I croaked, and groped for my satchel. Ms. Goodfellow came crawling out, and curled up upon my stomach.
‘Good,’ I gasped, and returned my pipes to my lips. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried playing a wind instrument when all the wind has just been smartly knocked out of you, but it isn’t easy.
Jay came bombing into view. Being forewarned, courtesy of Ves, he did not repeat my graceless performance but landed with a crisp snap and leapt out of his chair. ‘How the hell is it that you manage to keep not being dead?’ he said, at (I thought) unreasonable volume.
I waved a hand at him in a hush, you gesture. ‘They’re coming,’ I said, removing the pipes but briefly from my lips.
‘Who are— oh my god.’ A shadow passed over the sun; Jay looked up, and up, and stood mouth agape, for soaring overhead was a magickal beast straight out of legend. The size of a small ship, with a lion’s body and a bird’s plumage, it was mottled in white and tawny-yellow and red, its body wreathed in crackling lightning. Its beak was shut, talons peacefully curled as it spiralled its lazy way down to where I and my pipes lay.
Another two came wafting down behind it.
Considering that, last time, we’d been greeted with sharp beaks and claws, I thought this something of an improvement.
But Jay stood rigid as a rock, until the first griffin landed barely five feet away and he began to tremble. ‘Uh,’ he whispered, and apparently ran out of words.
I couldn’t blame him. I make it a point of honour never to visibly lose my shit, but it was difficult not to. The last time I had been in close quarters with a griffin, it had been trying to eat my face. Easily thirty times my size, this one was passive only because I played. Probably? What would happen if I ran out of breath?
Rob. Rob would happen. A dark shape flitted across the sky not far from the majestic griffins; Rob was ready, his enchanted knives in hand, to get those blades between me and the griffin if necessary.
Keep it together, Ves, I told myself. I didn’t want us to die that day, but I didn’t want any griffins to die that day either.
‘Ves,’ said Indira, very softly, from behind me. I jumped. I hadn’t seen or heard her approach. ‘Ves, you can stop playing.’
I leaned back my head, and signalled with my eyes that she was insane.
She smiled faintly. ‘No, really. It’s all right. Stop.’
Returning my wary gaze to the nearest of the three griffins, I tentatively let my song trail off. The melody continued without me, its volume a little muted, but the enchantment held.
‘The rocks have got it,’ said Indira.
Of course they did. ‘Right,’ I said, and, very carefully, sat up, resettling my unhappy pup in my lap. ‘You realise you two could rule the world if you wanted to?’ I added, addressing Indira and Jay.
‘Some other time,’ said Jay tightly.
‘Where did you get those pipes?’ said Indira.
I considered trotting out the line I’d used on Jay (classified, sorry), which was true enough, but I felt I owed Indira for the rocks thing. ‘Got them from a unicorn,’ I said nonchalantly.
Jay eyeballed me. ‘Of course you did. Would this be a good time to enquire what we’re doing playing chicken with a trio of griffins?’
‘We’re getting a good look at everything.’
‘Everything?’
‘Mountain plus occupants.’ I made a go-on motion with my hands.
Jay gave a slightly shaky sigh, and squared his shoulders. ‘Should’ve been a librarian,’ he muttered under his breath.
Indira, however, was already way ahead of him. And, for that matter, me. ‘It’s not the mountain,’ she said softly.
“It”, I supposed, meant the magickal heart of Farringale Dell, and she was right. It was a shapely and attractive mountain, to be sure, and all aflourish, but it was no magick-soaked source of one of the most potent Dells in history.
The griffins, though. Those were highly interesting.
Back in the mid thirteen hundreds, a fine fellow named Sir John Mandeville wrote a travel memoir. Val has a prized early edition in the original French, which no one — no one — is permitted to go near. In this wondrous volume, he describes the griffin thus (loosely translated): “…Some men say they have the body upward as an eagle and beneath as a lion; and truly they say sooth, that they be of that shape. But one griffin hath the body more great and is more strong than eight lions, of such lions as be on this half, and more great and stronger than an hundred eagles such as we have amongst us…” I’d now say even this princely description rather understated the case. Eight lions? Maybe triple that number, and… keep going.
They were mesmerising, terrifying, awe-inspiring — and they radiated magick. They had so much of it they couldn’t hold it; hence the gold-touched lightning that rippled and flickered ceaselessly over their glossy feathers, even when they stood, heads drooping, gently at rest.
I risked a quick glance upwards. We had attracted three. How many more were up there?
‘Is it the griffins?’ I said in awe. ‘Are they the heart of Farringale?’
19
‘I think so,’ whispered Indira, gazing at our griffin companion like a woman ensorcelled.
If true, the implications were astounding. It has long been supposed that magickal beasts are drawn to the magick that soaks every inch of a Dell or Enclave. What if, sometimes, it was the other way around? What if it was the beasts who brought the magick to the Dells? Or some combination of the two?
We’d let griffins die out. They’d been hunted for their claws and horns and bones: “For he hath his talons so long and so large and great upon his feet, as though they were horns of great oxen or of bugles or of kine, so that men make cups of them to drink of. And of their ribs and of the pens of their wings, men make bows, full strong, to shoot with arrows and quarrels.” (Mandeville again). Their talons and feathers and eggs were said to have various restorative or curative properties, and perhaps that was even the truth. There was also the incidental fact that they could be somewhat dangerous. For all these reasons and more, they had been hunted to destruction centuries ago.
A chagrined thought drifted across my mind. If magick had declined, was this partly why? We’d been killing off some of its most potent sources for the sake of a feather or two.
I’m occasionally ashamed to classify myself as human.
One of the griffins was staring right at me.
I managed not to squeak, and I was proud of myself for that small victory. The griffin in question might have been the smallest of the three, but that was not saying much. It could still have swallowed me in a single snap of its beak.
I stared back.
Those eyes, the deep green of fresh moss, held a spark of liveliness I found surprising considering the potency of my magickal lullaby. All right, maybe it was arrogance to think my own mere magicks could hold a trio of griffins for more than three seconds. But I had got those pipes from a creature of similar magickal eminence, which said a lot for their efficacy; and it had worked before, when I had almost been swallowed by one.
This griffin,
though, was definitely not lulled. Nor was it making violent objection to our foray into its territory. It looked like… dared I believe it? Like it was not so much tranquillised by the music as simply… enjoying it.
‘Well,’ Jay croaked. ‘If you’re right about this lot, it’s just possible they won’t eat us.’
Indeed. Because according to Lady Tregawny, the population of Farringale had made festive pilgrimages out here to the griffins’ mountain in order to… what, exactly? Our new hypothesis cast her account in a different light. They had allotted me a fair draught… what had they been doing? Were they celebrating those surges of magick, or — or making use of them?
Especially Torvaston.
‘Considering we are the first people to set foot in Farringale for quite some years—’ I began.
‘As far as we know,’ put in Jay.
I inclined my head in acknowledgement of this point. ‘Their earlier aggression may have had more to do with surprise than a deep-seated need to rend us apart.’
‘They can’t be the same ones as were here in Torvaston’s day,’ Jay said, shaking his head.
‘Can’t? Do you know how long griffins live?’
‘No,’ he allowed. ‘How long do they live?’
‘I’m not sure anyone knows. We kept killing them for their feathers.’
Jay grimaced. ‘Right.’
Something unpleasant was happening to the floor. I’d become aware of it first as a faint warmth, and then a low, peaceful, thrumming, as of nectar-drunk bees.
Then the ground began to pulse, slowly, rhythmically, like a heartbeat.
It was a heartbeat. The goldish lightning crackled and buzzed around the three griffins, whose lassitude fell away. Soon, all three wore sheet lightning like cloaks, and the jolts of energy made my teeth buzz.
I realised what was happening, but too late.
‘This is going to hurt,’ I gasped, and was all too swiftly proved right.
Perhaps half an hour later, the four of us lay, felled like little trees, alone upon the mountainside. Our griffin “friends” had gone.
Okay, they had left us intact, and that was nice. But they had used us like some kind of magickal dumping-ground and that I did somewhat resent.
Despite my weakness, Lady Tregawny had said, and that, too, suddenly made sense. If you pumped a frail witch full of this much magick, she might not swound so much as suffer a heart attack on the spot. How fortunate that her ladyship had survived the experience long enough to write about it.
I tried to speak, but only a strangled choking sound emerged.
Rob began to cough. I’m pretty sure somebody else vomited, but I could not tell who.
‘Right,’ I managed, after another minute or so of deep breathing. ‘Let’s turn this to good effect, shall we?’
‘How?’ gasped Jay.
‘First, I’m going to need my chair back.’ I staggered to my feet, and limped over to the broken remains of my little vehicle. My technique was poor, I’ll give you that. I merely rammed lumps of wood roughly together and welded them there by pure force of will and magick. The result was as graceless as I so often was, which seemed fitting. Plus, I enjoyed a fractional lessening of the teeming magick that soaked my every pore.
Jay was getting into the spirit of things. ‘I want some more books,’ he said faintly, having managed to clamber into his own chair.
‘The shiny ones,’ I mumbled. ‘In the glass.’
‘Yep. Those.’
‘And then we are getting out of here,’ said Rob, sternly. ‘I think we’ve had enough fun at the Farringale party for today.’
The way I felt just then — like a wrung-out dishcloth, or a withered prune, while at the same time pulsing with magick like an overcharged battery — even I was not tempted to argue.
I will spare you an account of our somewhat ragged journey back into Farringale. Let’s just say that breaking my chair to bits and then clumsily shoving it back together did little to improve its navigational capabilities. Since I was also bashed up myself, and remained so despite Rob’s hasty magickal medicine, I cannot say that I enjoyed the experience much.
As we trailed away, forming a straggling line across the sky, those great, roiling storm-clouds shifted; bright lightning flashed; and out came the griffins. They remained aloof from us this time, distant shapes soaring far overhead, wheeling upon the winds. An occasional, hollow cry drifted down to us below, a piercingly lonely sound.
Liberating some more treasures from their enchanted glass houses proved more difficult than we were hoping. Even Rob’s splendid glass-breaking trick proved ineffectual when performed outside of a magickal surge, magick-soaked as he was. They had their uses, it seemed, even if they did render one too squiggly to easily take advantage.
So, we waited. I sat on the floor in one corner of the vaulted hall, feeding porridge alternately to myself and Ms. Goodfellow (it wasn’t half bad, after all, though it could have done with a liberal lacing of chocolate spread). I tipped the contents of my satchel over the marble tiles and surveyed the loot.
One Mauf, previously acquired.
One hand-written book, apparently written in gibberish.
One set of memoirs, penned by the mysterious Lady Tregawny.
One as-yet-unidentified scroll in jewelled case, courtesy of Pup.
‘You know what confuses me about this place?’ I said after a while, but no one answered. Jay had wandered off to the other side of the wide hall, and applied himself to a study of some of the titles shelved there. Indira was floating in a chair somewhere over my head, scrutinising the long rows of glass-bound treasures (or Treasures?) stored farther up. ‘They aren’t all books!’ she had announced some minutes before, and then maintained a steady report of her findings: ‘A bunch of keys. A… hat, or something. Can’t tell. Oh, a crown!’ My ears pricked up at the word “crown”, especially when it was shortly followed by: ‘A few Wands, a sceptre, orb…’
Hmm.
‘It’s the fact that everything is so well-kept,’ I continued, even if no one was listening. ‘Look at it. Dust-free, grimeless. All right, so the Sweeping Symphony would keep that under control. But it’s more than that. It’s like the Starstone Spire in here. These books are insufficiently aged. Same goes for the furniture, the buildings themselves — the only signs of decay we’ve seen are an occasional stagnant puddle and some day-to-day level building deterioration. I mean, look at this.’ I opened the hand-written journal with its pretty jade covers. ‘This has to have been written hundreds of years ago, but the ink hasn’t faded at all. I could conclude that someone put a pretty powerful preservation charm on it, but would that last so long, or so well? And has someone done the same with every single object in this entire city? I think not.
‘Then there’s the ortherex. Those surges of magick might explain why they’re still here, but I doubt it. If they could thrive on nothing but magick alone, why do they bother with trolls at all? If there are no living hosts left here, then they cannot breed, and should have died off long ago.’ I’d had some of these questions lurking at the back of my mind for weeks, without arriving at any particular conclusions. Now they were really piling up.
Jay drifted nearer. ‘You’re not veering back to that time travel theory, are you?’
‘No. Not quite that.’
‘Not quite?’ Jay propped himself upon my chosen wall and surveyed my little haul thoughtfully. ‘You’re right, of course. I’ve been wondering the same things.’
I banged my head back against the wall in frustration. ‘Why is there no information on this? It’s maddening. And I could go on. The griffins. Why are they still here? Is it just that, with Farringale being closed off, no one could get in to hunt them down? It might be that simple, but then again maybe not. And what if my tossed-off suggestion was right? What if they are the same ones that were here when Farringale fell? What would that mean?’
‘Either they live an incredibly long time,’ Jay said. ‘Or, like everything
else in here, they apparently don’t age.’
‘That’s it.’ I pointed a finger at Jay, sitting up straighter. ‘That’s it. Is everything incredibly well preserved in spite of the passage of time, or is it not experiencing the passage of time? If nothing ages, is it because the process has been interfered with, or is it simply not happening at all?’
‘You mean time doesn’t pass in Farringale? No. It must, or why would there be any need for the Sweeping Symphony? How would those stagnant puddles develop?’
I gnawed a fingernail. ‘Maybe it does, but just… not much of it. Maybe it’s still pretty much 1658 in here.’
‘Ves, you can’t put a stasis enchantment on an entire city.’
‘I can’t, no, and neither could you. I’m pretty sure none of us could pull that off now. But we’re talking about centuries ago, before the decline of magick. And, we’re talking about a city that’s drenched in so much magick it’s drowning in it. Was it impossible here, so many years ago? Oh! You know what else, that would sort of explain how Baroness Tremayne’s still here, too. Or was, the last time.’
I remain, whispered the Baroness, so near to my ear that I jumped with a shriek.
‘What?’ Jay said, scrambling towards me. But he was too slow. By the time he reached the spot I’d been sitting in, I was gone.
20
Baroness Tremayne lived between the echoes, as she had once put it. Then again, did she in fact live? Her insubstantial shadow world bore little resemblance to the vivid reality I knew. She’d pulled me sideways, as she had done before, and landed me in the middle of it, with all its darkness and distracting, flickery lights. I was still in the vaulted hall, but in some blurred, altered version. Between the echoes. I still did not understand quite what that meant.
The baroness, unchanged, regarded me gravely. She wore the same wide-skirted silk gown, ruffled with lace; the same artfully piled and curled arrangement graced her white hair. ‘How curious a mind,’ she said. ‘Why do you return here? Did I not already satisfy your needs?’
Modern Magick 5 Page 13
