And I still felt like we were here more by some kind of fluke than by our own efforts.
Or by Milady’s possible flickers of clairvoyance. After all, it was she who had manoeuvred things so that we could keep our mischievous nose-for-gold Pup. It was Pup who had retrieved the scroll-case from Farringale, and brought it to me. It was Milady again who had brought in the Baron, and through him we had forged links with the Court at Mandridore — who had sent us out here. With Alban in pursuit, bearing just the things we needed to get into this room.
I shied away from concluding that anything like fate had brought us here; that would be absurd. But a somewhat manipulated run of “luck” certainly had. So then, why?
‘What’s in here that’s important?’ I said to Jay. Luan was on the other side of the room, still in a state of reverence. I half expected him to fall to his knees before an enormous, bejewelled chair that strongly resembled a throne. He’d probably die before he so much as considered sitting on it.
I, however, strongly wanted to plant my derriere on those sumptuous green velvet cushions.
I turned my face away from it, lest the temptation should overcome me.
‘Important?’ Jay said, frowning. ‘All of it, surely.’
‘As far as intriguing uses of magick go, and evidence of a delightful excess: yes. But I mean, what’s important to us in here.’
‘You mean, what would Milady want us to shamelessly make off with?’
‘No!’ I gasped, appalled. ‘What would Milady want us to… heroically liberate in the name of magick.’
‘My mistake.’
‘Hint: It’s unlikely to be anything with material value.’
‘So not the gigantic pile of magickal silver lying in a storeroom nearby.’
‘Is it really gigantic?’
‘Relatively speaking. It’s enough to make a few lyres and snuff boxes, anyway.’
‘None of it looks like it might be a conveniently flat-packed magickal regulator, I suppose?’
‘Because they absolutely had IKEA for uniquely powerful artefacts in the seventeen hundreds.’
‘You never know.’
He grinned. ‘Yes, I do. And no, it doesn’t.’
‘Curse it.’
He looked around at Torvaston’s glamorous bedchamber, and shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Ves. Everything in here is dripping in gold. It could be anything or nothing.’
Most likely nothing, I thought, though my eye lingered on those cabinets. The curiously changeable nature of the contents intrigued me a little. What better way to protect objects of unusual value, than to make it impossible to identify what each object was?
Then again, it could also be an elaborate feint. If I were prone to thieving artefacts of great power — just for instance — the so-obviously magickal nature of all those carefully stored articles would attract me greatly. I’d be inclined to empty those cabinets forthwith, and might miss something more subtle.
Like… like a secret door, for example. Secret, but not because it was hidden. More because it was so subtle. Blandly mundane in the midst of such splendour, and half-hidden behind a cabinet to boot.
‘Did you go through that door?’ I asked Jay, pointing.
‘What door— oh.’ He blinked in its general direction. ‘I didn’t notice it before.’
‘Because you looked right past it, or conceivably because it wasn’t there before?’
Jay thought. ‘I honestly don’t know.’
‘I vote we investigate.’
‘Seconded.’
But as we ventured towards the door, it melted away.
There and then gone.
Jay took this in stride, which said a lot about his experiences with the Society since he’d joined us. Disappearing doors? All in a day’s work. He went up to the wall where the door had been, and felt around with his hands. ‘It’s really gone,’ he reported.
‘Right.’ I did a three hundred and sixty degree turn, scanning the room.
And spotted the slithery thing skulking behind an elegant console table, not far from the throne. Chair. Whatever. ‘There!’ I said, and ran for it.
This time, I almost made it before it began to fade. ‘No, you don’t,’ I said, and made a grab for the heavy silver (or Silver?) doorknob.
My fingers closed around it, and I yelped. It was cold, like ice fresh from the freezer. It hurt to touch it, but I grimly hung on, and threw my full body weight behind my efforts to haul it open.
Without much effect. A five-foot-barely-anything Ves doesn’t weigh all that much, I guess. The door fought me, inexorably squeezing itself closed. ‘Ow,’ I yelled, the doorknob burning my hands in that weird way that only ice can do.
Jay’s hands closed around mine, and suddenly the door’s trajectory was reversed. Inch by inch, we prised it open until Jay could get a foot in between it and the doorjamb.
There was no stopping him after that. He dragged the reluctant door open by sheer brute force, face thunderous, and finished the process off by way of a couple of rather savage kicks. ‘You can let go,’ he said, and dragged my hands away from the doorknob.
I relinquished it gratefully. Jay, standing squarely in the way of the door, wouldn’t let me go in until he’d turned my hands palm-up and checked them over.
‘Hurts?’ he asked.
I twitched my fingers. ‘Ow,’ I confirmed.
He glanced again at the door, and the thunderous look returned. Was he angry with it for burning my hands? ‘I’ve nothing to say in defence of the door’s conduct,’ I offered. ‘But in fairness, it was me who grabbed the handle like an idiot.’
Jay released me. ‘Whatever’s out here better be worth it.’
At first glance, it didn’t look like it. Stepping from Torvaston’s spectacular bedchamber into his hidden rooms was like going from a palace into a monastery. We beheld a simple scholar’s cell, white-walled, with an unpolished oaken floor and a single desk — the high-backed kind, once commonly used in cloister libraries.
I hastened eagerly towards that desk, my injury forgotten.
But only disappointment awaited me there. The desk was bare. No ancient quill-pen did I see, lying where Torvaston (presumably) had left it before he died. No stone inkwell sat waiting, filled with peculiarly fresh ink.
No books, scrolls or diaries lay open and inviting, filled with ancient secrets for Val to pore over.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said, searching in vain for signs of something interesting in that room. ‘Why was this place hidden and protected, if there’s nothing here?’
‘Well.’ Jay paced back and forth, his dark eyes scanning every inch of the walls and floor. ‘If the room itself was hidden and protected, does it not stand to reason that its contents might be as well?’
Hmm.
I devoted myself to a close scrutiny of the desk. I patted it all over with my hands, searching for signs of a hidden drawer. I knocked upon its panels, hoping for hollow sounds suggestive of a secret compartment.
Nothing.
‘What is it that you are doing?’ came Earl Evemer’s voice all of a sudden, and he sounded every inch an aristocrat. Grave, pompous, disapproving.
‘Looking for something significant,’ I answered, without stopping what I was doing. Having got this far, we weren’t stopping just because Luan wanted to treat Torvaston’s personal effects as religious relics.
‘Be careful,’ he snapped, as I knocked a little too hard on the heavy oak wood and made it rattle a bit.
‘I could set fire to this thing and it would be virtually untouched,’ I said, with faint annoyance. ‘They’re built to withstand the apocalypse, and this one no doubt has heavy magickal wards as well.’
Luan began to look like a harassed parent with two exhaustingly wayward offspring. ‘I begin to think—’ he said, but whatever he had begun to think was destined to remain forever unknown, for Jay’s cry of triumph interrupted him.
I looked up. Jay stood face-to-face with a plain, white-was
hed expanse of wall. He had his fingers in something. As I watched, he peeled back a section of the wall like it was wallpaper.
Which it wasn’t. I felt a surge of magick from his corner of the room; he was stripping away glamours like they were pasted on with glue.
I made a mental note to ask him how he’d done that, later.
Behind the glamoured wall, another door lay concealed, but this one was tiny — about two feet square, and positioned about seven feet off the floor.
Over Jay’s head, and well over mine.
‘I need a box to stand on, or something,’ said Jay, breathless with excitement, because above his head the door — crystalline and sparkling with magick — was slowly opening.
‘Allow me,’ said Luan severely. Before either of us could interfere, he reached up with ease and extracted the contents of the glamoured space in the wall.
My librarian’s heart beat quick, for it was a scroll, and a good one, too. Wide and fat, it contained a great deal of rolled-up parchment. It practically glowed with promise, but that might just have been my fevered imagination.
I stopped breathing as Luan slowly, carefully unrolled it.
‘These are plans,’ he said, in the hushed voice of awe.
‘Tell me they’re for the Heart,’ I blurted.
He didn’t so much as glance at me, his gaze glued to the parchment. ‘I… I believe that is exactly what they are.’
14
I pelted towards Jay and Luan, dying for a glimpse of the scroll for myself. Plans for the Heart of Hyndorin! A paint-by-numbers how-to I could take back to Mandridore, from which they could build their very own magickal regulator.
Farringale would be saved.
The magick of the sixth Britain would be saved.
We’d done it.
But as I approached, Luan turned away from me, hiding the drawings behind his very broad back. ‘Hey,’ I objected. He’d pushed Jay out, too, and stood hogging all that delicious arcane knowledge for himself.
‘This must be destroyed,’ he said.
My jaw dropped. ‘What?’ I squeaked.
‘For the same reason that His Majesty destroyed the Heart itself.’ Luan began rolling up the scroll again, handling it with exquisite care. I wondered why he bothered, if he was just going to burn it or something. ‘If it should fall into the wrong hands…’
Hard to argue with that. If it fell into the wrong hands, the consequences could be bad.
Well, so what. The same went for literally every good thing ever known to man or beast. Or troll.
‘You can’t destroy it,’ I said, exchanging a look of pure horror with Jay. ‘It’s too important for that.’
‘Precisely,’ said Luan, unmoved.
‘Torvaston left this here on purpose,’ I said. ‘He went to a lot of trouble to leave a trail to it, too. Why did he do that, if someone wasn’t supposed to follow it someday?’
Luan hesitated, but only briefly. ‘His Majesty had not, at that time, beheld modern Vale.’
‘No, but he saw it coming. That’s why he destroyed the original. But he still thought it worthwhile to leave this here for us.’
Luan said nothing.
‘He knew magick would decline in our world,’ I said. ‘His writings suggest it. He left the keys to get in here in our Britain, and I think that’s because he left this here for us. We were supposed to find it someday, and use it. To mend the damage done to Farringale. To reverse the decline of magick. To fix things, Luan! Don’t take that from us. Please. We have to get this back to Their Majesties at Mandridore. They have a right to it, as Torvaston’s heirs.’
Luan looked at me. Instead of the anger or disapproval or even fear I had expected to see in his face, I saw profound sadness. ‘This was once the grandest, the most marvellous of all the Enclaves of Britain,’ he said. ‘Without contest or question. It was a place of… pure wonder. All that’s gone now.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s still a place of pure wonder. We’ve seen nothing like it.’
He shook his head. ‘It is nothing to compare to its heights. Nothing at all. And that is because of the Heart. The acrimony that it caused, the conflicts, the destruction…’
‘The Heart may be the reason for Hyndorin’s downfall,’ I said. ‘But it was also the power behind its days of glory. Without the Heart, neither the one nor the other could ever have happened. Luan, if you destroy this, you ensure that neither your Britain nor mine will ever see its like again.’
‘Especially ours,’ put in Jay.
I gave him a moment to think. We were getting somewhere, I could see it.
Then I said, ‘This is what His Majesty wanted.’
Luan hesitated, and sighed — and offered the scroll to me.
I grabbed it quick, with both hands, before he could change his mind. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Future generations will worship at the shrine of you.’
Jay frowned at me.
Right. Poor taste.
Hastily, I tucked the precious scroll into my shoulder-bag. I wanted it out of Luan’s sight, before he could work himself back around to another fit of opposition. Out of sight, out of mind?
Also, I wanted Mr. Mauf and Mr. Scroll to get acquainted. I didn’t yet know what Mauf had contrived to absorb down in that old workshop, but if he compared whatever he’d got with the contents of the new scroll, the results might be quite interesting.
Time for a speedy subject change. ‘About Pup,’ I said to Jay. ‘I don’t see her up here. Whereabouts did you leave her?’
‘Silver stores,’ he said. ‘Which are…’ he looked blank, and shrugged. ‘Somewhere else. All this voluntary/involuntary teleporting has me confused.’
I directed a hopeful look at Luan.
‘Allow me to be quite clear,’ he said, and the disapproving tone was back. ‘You will not be leaving here with that scroll, and our stores of Silver.’
‘We have not the slightest wish to,’ I assured him, which was a total lie, because the second I set eyes on that “gigantic pile” of fabulously valuable Silver I knew I would want every single scrap of it. ‘All we want is to retrieve Pup, and get out of your hair.’
‘My hair?’
Oops. ‘Just an expression.’
‘We’re going home,’ Jay supplied.
‘Well, they’re going home,’ I amended.
‘You are staying?’ said Luan, swift with suspicion.
‘I suppose so.’
‘Where?’
‘I… don’t know.’ The prospect of being left behind while Jay and Alban and Em went home sent the bottom dropping out of my stomach. Where would I go? What would I do, stranded in the fifth Britain by myself?
‘We aren’t leaving without you,’ said Jay firmly, and I could almost have kissed him for that, except that it would never do.
‘You have to,’ I retorted. ‘Someone’s got to get this scroll to Mandridore, and quickly.’
‘Then first we need to fix you.’
Fix me, like I was a broken refrigerator. Malfunctioning gadgetry, just see the repairman and all will be well.
I realised I was gazing at Jay with the Eyes of Hope, and hastily composed myself. ‘Do you think it’s possible?’
‘Ves. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from hanging around with you, it’s that every gods-damned insane thing imaginable is probably possible, if you can manage to be batshit crazy enough.’
My turn of phrase was rubbing off on Jay. ‘Are we batshit crazy enough?’
‘Always.’
My eyes filled momentarily with tears, rather to my shame. Sensible, unflappable, by-the-book Jay was volunteering to be a total madman for my sake.
My corrupting influence knew no bounds.
Jay gave a slight cough, and added, ‘Of course, we could use a little help.’ He was looking at Luan as he said it, the cheek. As though we hadn’t already complicated the poor Earl’s day enough.
Luan, unfortunately, looked nonplussed.
‘I have an ide
a,’ I said. ‘Magickal Silver absorbs magick, right? So how about you throw me head-first into that gigantic pile of yours and see how much of me comes out.’
Jay looked appalled.
‘It’ll be okay,’ I said, with a reassuring smile. ‘I’m pretty sure I’ll still have arms, legs and a head.’
‘No,’ said Luan. ‘I am sorry, but there is no known way to reverse the effects you refer to.’
I swallowed, for once in my life struck speechless. No way to reverse the effects. I was stuck forever. I would never see Home again. I’d have to spend the rest of my life living in Vale, just to be comfortable.
Only iron will kept me from bursting into tears and sobbing like a five-year-old all over Jay’s shirt.
Jay stared at me.
I can’t absolutely guarantee that my lip didn’t quiver, or that I didn’t look back at him with the lost look of a stray puppy.
I tried to be dignified, but news like that tends to cut a person off at the knees.
‘There has to be a way,’ Jay said, jaw set. ‘If we have to move a gods-damned mountain to get Ves home, we’ll do it.’
‘Jay—’ I began.
He cut me off. ‘Do you think Alban or Em wouldn’t say the same? We are not leaving without you.’ He enunciated the last six words clearly and with emphasis; clearly comprehensible, even for an idiot like me.
I took a shaky breath, and nodded. ‘Luan. You mentioned that some of you leave Hyndorin on occasion, but you implied that it wasn’t in order to visit another magick-drenched location, such as Vale.’
‘We go shopping,’ he said, with a twinkle. ‘Once in a while.’
‘In places of lesser magickal impact?’
‘Yes. Enclaves as — what did you call it? — magick-drenched as Hyndorin and Vale are not common, even in this Britain.’
‘How do you manage it, then? For if you live here with ease, you must be as magick-drowned as I am.’ I hoped. Either that or they were just used to dosing themselves with powdered unicorn horn every six hours.
Somehow I didn’t think that was it. Hundreds of years had passed. Generation after generation had lived here, and stayed here, even when they had little reason to remain.
‘The arts relating to the creatures known as Familiars,’ said Luan. ‘Are they still known about, in your Britain?’
Modern Magick 8 Page 9
