The library, as it turned out, was everything I could have wished for. Almost eerily silent, with a web of complex enchantments to block out all sound from beyond the walls; stuffed floor to ceiling with books, making the most of every available inch of space; and, considering that it was party season, encouragingly deserted. I do so enjoy having a library to myself.
Well, not quite to myself, but I did not mind sharing with Jay and Alban.
We were met by the librarian on duty. Sort of.
When I said they were making the most of every possible inch, I mean that their attitude to space was a little different to ours. On our Britain, we need things like walls to support bookcases, and floors upon which to stand desks and chairs. On the fifth, apparently they do not. The librarian sat at a heavy oak desk floating some eight feet above our heads, surrounded by a small fleet of other such furniture. She reached for a book as I watched, and plucked it from a shelf tucked just under the ceiling. Well, why bother clambering up ladders to fetch the books down when you can go up to meet them? It was like my flying chair trick, only about ten times more powerful.
A deep lust uncurled in my covetous soul, and I suddenly had no trouble understanding why Jay had been reluctant to leave.
So absorbed was the librarian in her work, whatever it was, that she did not notice our entry. At length, Jay discovered a bell hovering near the door, and lightly rang it.
‘Oh!’ said she, peering down at us. ‘Just a moment. Sorry.’
“A moment” turned out to be more like three or four minutes, but at last she drifted down — her chair did, anyway, with her seated upon it; the desk remained up near the ceiling. She smiled at us and said: ‘I wasn’t expecting anybody today.’
Justifiably enough; the people of Whitmore really knew how to party. ‘We’re visiting,’ I told her. Her appearance fascinated me a little. She was as short as me, but thinner, even fragile-looking, with pale, wispy hair and sea-green eyes. Human enough, I thought, but not human through-and-through; her features, her air of ethereal delicacy, suggested to me that she had significant fae heritage somewhere in her family tree. Was that common for Whitmore? Or perhaps across the whole of the fifth? Perhaps it was. If the magick half of the world had no need to hide themselves, it stood to reason that intermingling would lead to more people of mixed heritage.
I liked this.
‘Melmidoc sent us down here,’ Jay told her, which wasn’t a bad move. ‘We’re looking for anything you have on ortherex infestations.’
Her face lit up at mention of Melmidoc’s name — and then fell again at Jay’s next words. Hardly surprising. Could there be a more deeply unsexy subject than pest management?
‘Our focus tends to be on more arcane subjects, but I’ll see what I can find.’ She went off, on foot this time, to consult an enormous tome chained to a pedestal some way behind her. An old-school library catalogue, a foot thick, its spine supported by chunky bronze hinges and its pages clad in thick green leather. Did they not have computers on Whitmore? Not that I was displeased. My nerdy little soul blazed with delight at sight of so beautiful a book.
I heard a cheery yip from behind me, and whirled. There was my pup!
…and at least twenty others. They came streaming in the library door, tails waving like flags, noses scooting along the ground as they scattered everywhere.
‘Oops,’ said Jay. ‘Maybe should not have left the door open.’
‘Um.’ I eyed the wriggling yellow furries doubtfully. ‘Which one of you is Pup?’
‘You still haven’t given her a name?’ said Alban, and then pointed out one of the pups — the one presently trying to climb the leg of the nearest desk. ‘There she is.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘She’s got your ring on her horn.’
She did, too. My right ring finger was bare of the labradorite hoop that usually adorned it. The jewel lay instead around the base of my disgraceful pup’s single horn, a glint of pearly rainbow colours among her yellow fur.
‘How did you—?!’ I resisted the temptation to clutch at my golden hair, the colour of which could not be changed without that ring, and set off after her.
‘How about Robin Goodfellow?’ Alban called after me.
9
Later, having peeled Ms. Goodfellow off the leg of the desk, pried my Curiosity out of her possession, and ushered her legion of new friends out of the door again (social butterfly, my pup), we were presented with one, meagre book by our new librarian friend. It was a thin thing, with anaemic white covers and a disappointing lack of heft.
‘It’s really not a popular topic,’ said the librarian, no doubt meaning to be kind as she demolished our mission in a mere six words.
I leafed through it. It contained annotated diagrams of an ortherex parasite and its eggs and larva, plus some notes as to its preferred habitats (rocky spaces in adulthood, especially underground, and a warm, magickal body for the eggs). Young and old alike fed greedily off magickal energies, the fresher the better, which is why they tended to collect in Dells, Dales and Enclaves.
Speaking of which. ‘Farringale is still an active Dell, isn’t it?’ I said aloud.
‘You mean in the magickal sense?’ asked Alban. ‘It seemed to be. It’s unlikely there would still be griffins living there if…’ He paused, staring into space. ‘Griffins,’ he repeated.
‘Yes?’ I prompted.
‘Griffins are as rare as unicorns, no?’
‘At least.’
‘They don’t live just anywhere, do they?’
‘No. I mean, it’s the size of them as much as anything. They need a lot of food, and a strong magickal source, especially if they’re raising young.’
‘Indeed,’ said Alban. ‘So. Where else are there known to be griffins?’
I turned back to the librarian, but Jay was way ahead of me, already asking her for every available resource on griffins.
‘And Magickal Dells,’ I added. ‘Especially the more powerful or unusual ones.’
I could see our credit as scholars was rising by the minute with the librarian. ‘Oh, we’d have lots about that,’ she enthused, and off she went.
Over the next couple of hours, our scholarly spelunkings uncovered the following nuggets of information:
1: While the Court of Farringale survived on the fifth Britain, it was not home to a colony of griffins, as ours was.
2: Griffin sightings were almost as rare on the fifth as they were in our home Britain, the sixth. But, this was not because they were rare in number. It was thought to be due to their intensely magickal nature; like unicorns, they are steeped in the stuff up to their eyeballs from birth (I paraphrase here). Not only can they bear a much closer proximity to dangerously powerful magickal energies than the rest of us, they actually thrive upon it. They need it. Ergo, griffins and unicorns both tend to populate areas in which mere humans, trolls or (arguably) lesser fae fear to tread.
3: Griffins are among the most dangerous of magickal creatures, and nobody wants to tangle with them. Whole villages have been evacuated overnight when a nesting pair of griffins made themselves at home there. But, there have also been recorded cases of griffins and other races living comfortably together without incident.
4: Related to the last point, it has sometimes been known to happen that a known magickal reservoir (a poor term, for it wrongly implies that pools of magick just lie soggily about the place, begging to be dived into, which is not at all the case; but it’s the best we have got) can undergo major, and apparently spontaneous, changes. Once in a great while, a Magickal Dell simply… dies, because its reservoirs dry up. On other occasions, the opposite can happen: a nice, mild Dell with just the right flows of magick can flare up without warning, flashing from balmy to deadly in a matter of hours. If we’re going to go with water analogies, it would be like the placid pond at the bottom of your garden turning into a small sea. Or perhaps a wide ocean. You may not love it if this happened, but creatures like griffins wou
ld.
5: This stuff is rare. Incredibly rare. But it happens.
‘What if it wasn’t really the ortherex that destroyed Farringale?’ Jay said at last. ‘What if they were flooded with magick?’
Alban nodded. ‘Which attracted griffins and ortherex alike, and drove away whoever was left alive after that.’
‘In which case,’ I said, ‘perhaps Their Majesties were essentially correct after all. This is a natural disaster. Or on the other hand: why do Dells sometimes flood? Just because no one has yet uncovered a root cause, does not necessarily mean it’s random. There haven’t been enough recorded instances of it to detect patterns, or form workable theories.’
We were gathered around a circular table in one corner of the library, ignoring a growing hunger and thirst (speaking for myself, at least) in the pursuit of Knowledge. Ms. Goodfellow had given up on us and conked out on the table top; Jay had propped a book open against her furry back. She was too deeply asleep to notice.
‘Are you still working on that conspiracy theory?’ Alban said to me, with a faint smile.
‘That somebody deliberately destroyed Farringale? Hmm. Well. I wouldn’t call it a theory, but it is a possibility that ought to be considered.’
Alban nodded. ‘When we get back to Court, I’ll see what the libraries have got about the last days of Farringale. Though I warn you not to get your hopes up too much. There really isn’t a lot.’
‘Which I can’t help thinking is significant. So important and catastrophic an event ought to have more records associated with it. It ought to have been exhaustively studied.’
‘Oh, it has been studied to death. There are endless pamphlets, dissertations and treatises waxing lyrical on a thousand possible causes for its demise. But since none of those authors had the benefit of actual access to the city itself, and because there’s so little hard evidence to base those theories on, it’s all just hot air. I suspect it’s become something of a sport by now. Who can come up with the wildest theory yet?’
‘Either way, Mel is right,’ I said. ‘If we’re correct in thinking that it’s a magickal surge that brought the ortherex, and the griffins, to Farringale — and keeps them there — then that’s what would have to be reversed in order to restore it to safety.’
‘Tall order,’ said Jay.
‘Truth. Has such a thing ever been done? Has anyone even tried?’ Our stack of books, informative as they were, had given no such indication. The few recorded occasions of magickal surges, or floods, had typically devastated a village here and there, or a small town; the inhabitants had simply moved to a new, safer spot, and gone on with their lives. Nobody had considered it worth the effort of trying to retrieve a flooded site, which told me one thing at least: there was certainly no easy way to do it.
But, we had the entire Court of Mandridore on our side.
‘We’ll have to be the first,’ said Jay.
‘I feel like a hero already.’
‘The ortherex and the griffins are an obstacle,’ Alban pointed out.
‘Right. Their Majesties will be needing significant non-troll assistance.’ I beamed at him.
‘Plus a couple of excellent griffin-tamers.’
‘A dime a dozen, those,’ I said stoutly.
‘Ves. That’s a lie.’
‘No. It’s optimism.’
Alban folded his arms. ‘Same thing.’
I winced. ‘Your cynicism is showing, your highness.’
I was rewarded with a scowl, which I felt was not undeserved.
‘I want,’ I said shortly afterwards, as we left the library of Whitmore and wended our way back up to Mel’s spire, ‘to go over the water, and see the rest of this Britain.’
‘All of it?’ said Jay.
‘Yes.’
‘That will take a while.’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay, I’m in.’ He held up his closed fist, which I bumped with my own.
‘One crazy mission at a time?’ Alban said. ‘Can we do that?’
‘Fine, fine. Farringale first, then the world.’
Jay was clutching our stack of books, with the same tenderness he might show to a puppy, or his firstborn child. He’d cared for his haul from Farringale with similar devotion. I did so like that about him. He had also undertaken to persuade the librarian to let us abscond with them, which had been no easy task. Even bandying Melmidoc’s name about hadn’t convinced her. I wasn’t sure how he had, in the end, except that it might have had something to do with that ineffable charm of his. Put anyone in a room with Jay for long enough, and they’d do anything for him.
I probably needed to work on improving my defences.
Anyway, we’d soothed the anxious librarian with promises of leaving the books at the spire, which we assuredly would, too — right after we’d given Mauf plenty of time to canoodle with them. We wanted to take their contents with us, if we couldn’t take the books themselves.
At the spire, we found Mauf deep in conversation with Mel. Loudly, too; laughter drifted through the closed door as we approached, audible even over the music, followed by snatches of some debate conducted at top volume.
‘When I said they’d get along splendidly, I didn’t know I was speaking the literal truth,’ I said as I pushed open the door, mystified.
Mauf lay sprawled in the centre of the otherwise empty hallway, his pages drifting idly back and forth. If he wasn’t a book and therefore constitutionally incapable of it, I’d have said he might be drunk.
‘Miss Vesper!’ he carolled joyfully as I stepped inside, Ms. Goodfellow trotting at my heels. ‘Pleasant greetings!’
‘Thank you,’ I said, conscious of a feeling of wariness. ‘And what have you two been up to?’
‘This fellow knows everything — everything — about the seventeenth principle of magickal dynamism under controlled conditions,’ said Mauf.
It was a specialty of mine, in my youth, said Melmidoc modestly.
The look on Jay’s face told me he had as little notion what Mauf was on about as I did.
‘We’ve been thieving,’ I said brightly, as Jay carefully set his stack of books down by Mauf. ‘With permission, I swear.’
I am astonished that Pherellina was able to provide you with such a wealth of material on the ortherex.
‘She wasn’t. Most of this is about Magickal Dells, surges, and griffins.’
Oh?
I told Melmidoc all about our fledgling theory. To my ear at least, it sounded very thin when spoken aloud. ‘I know we’ve only the most circumstantial evidence as yet,’ I finished. ‘But we’d like to investigate further.’
I have been debating within myself during your absence, Melmidoc replied. In fact, your excellent companion and I have had some conversation together upon a topic which may be of relevance to your quest.
‘Not the seventeenth principle of magickal dynamism under controlled conditions?’ I guessed.
Not that. No. This is mere rumour, a tale, one I have long dismissed as nonsense. But perhaps it is more than that.
‘Stories often contain a kernel of truth,’ I offered. ‘Sometimes a lot more than that.’
Indeed. Well, then. Some years after my removal here with my brother, and the most dedicated of our students and colleagues, it was suggested to me that we were not the only explorers from the sixth Britain to settle in these parts.
‘What!’
Yes. We, too, were interested, at least at first. But as the story unfolded, our excitement faded, for the scenario seemed to us so replete with absurdity as to be wholly uncreditable. These other refugees were trolls, supposedly, from Farringale itself. No ordinary citizens, either; they included the highest of courtiers, prominent officials and scholars — even, so it was said, the king himself.
10
‘Torvaston the Second?’ I gasped. ‘But no, how could that be? He and Queen Hrruna founded the new court at Mandridore.’
You see the problem. Not that I was aware of this point of detail
myself, for with these snatches of rumour came no report of the catastrophe at Farringale. But in my memory, Farringale was all-powerful, utterly unassailable. Why, then, should Torvaston ever leave it? And without Hrruna? It was impossible to credit such ridiculous assertions, and I ceased to listen to those who spread them. Somewhat to my regret, now.
My brain reeling, I had no immediate idea of what to say. Alban looked absolutely thunderstruck.
‘But, no,’ he said, faintly. ‘That cannot be, Melmidoc. It cannot. It is so widely known that Torvaston and Hrruna both took the Court to Mandridore. If the king had vanished, that must have been known. How could it have been concealed?’
I cannot answer that any more than you can, said Melmidoc. And perhaps I was right to dismiss these stories; perhaps they cannot, after all, be true. But I thought that you should know of them.
‘You were right,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Melmidoc.’ My heart was fluttering with excitement at this new mystery, and I wanted to set off running at once. What if it was true? What if?
‘Where did they go?’ said Jay. ‘Was it ever said? I can’t suppose they went off to your other Farringale.’
No, I do not suppose it either, Melmidoc agreed. The Court here is similar in some respects, but wildly different in many others, and would offer nothing of the comfort of familiarity a refugee might seek. Besides which, of course, Torvaston was king only in his own Britain. Another held that position here. No, I do not think it likely they went to Farringale, but where they went instead, I never did learn.
Alban was looking wild-eyed, and I thought I could guess at some of his thoughts. If Torvaston the Second had disappeared, who had known of it? Who knew of it now? Did his current liege-lords have the smallest suspicion?
What is commonly known about the earliest days of the new Court at Mandridore? Melmidoc asked.
‘Um.’ Alban visibly collected himself. ‘I’ve never studied the details, but it’s known that many of the Old Court made the transfer. Not all, but both of the monarchs for certain.’ He thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘It isn’t my area of expertise. I’d have to research.’
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