‘Curse it.’
‘Does it bother you so very much?’
‘It didn’t, until I played the thing. Now I am too explosively magickal to go home, and that bothers me quite a lot.’ I did not add that I felt condemned to Torvaston’s own fate. Exiled from my own Britain, and obliged to stay forever in a place like Hyndorin or Vale. I mean, it was a perfectly lovely tower, but nothing to compare to the familiar comforts and chaos of Home.
A swift stab of intense homesickness took me aback, and I paused to swallow it down.
‘Magickal silver is sought after for more than one reason,’ said Luan. ‘Partly for its propensity to absorb magickal energy. It is only a personal theory, but I believe that may have been the original source for His Majesty’s ideas.’
‘Yes!’ I said. ‘That makes sense. Perhaps he thought it could be used to absorb the excess at old Farringale, and… undrown it.’
‘Perhaps so,’ Luan allowed. ‘But it also, as you have discovered, has the capacity to expend energy in interesting ways — specifically, without much depleting stored magicks. In other words, it absorbs and also generates, in a cycle reminiscent of the behaviour of nesting griffins.’
I nodded. This coincided, more or less, with our own ideas. ‘And Torvaston himself?’ I guessed.
Luan eyed me. ‘I may be wrong, but your condition could prove confirmation of an idea I have long toyed with.’
‘Torvaston was a kind of human griffin,’ I said. ‘His personal papers suggest as much.’
‘Yes. And he may have become so in the same way that you have. Through close contact with, and manipulation of, a charged source of magickal silver.’
That agreed with everything Alban had told us. ‘Was he… ever known to have, um, stopped being a human griffin?’
‘No.’
Damnit. I really was stuck forever.
‘The lyre, perhaps, may prove both curse and cure,’ suggested Luan. ‘But in the meantime, let us tend to your unfortunate colleague.’ He stood up — but then his eyes flicked to me, and he said, ‘Or perhaps you may do so.’
‘Me?’ I echoed dumbly.
‘Imbalance is the problem. Your friend — you called him Jay? — is out of his magickal depth, here, and is therefore vulnerable to interference.’
‘Magickal shot straight to the heart?’ I suggested.
Luan blinked, nonplussed. ‘If you were to share some what you call your excess magick with your colleague, it may stabilise him.’
I liked this idea much better than chugging unicorn organs. ‘But will it make him like me?’ I asked, struck with sudden alarm. Jay might have talked of staying in the fifth Britain forever, but absolutely had not been serious. I didn’t want to condemn him to share my exile.
‘Were the effects of those “potions” you spoke of permanent?’ said Luan, with an amused smile.
‘Strictly temporary.’
‘Then I believe you may proceed with confidence.’
All well and good, but how exactly did one go about magickally supercharging one’s friends? ‘No offence, Jay, but I’m not giving up a kidney for this.’
He gave me a flat, hard look. It probably said, if you imagine I’m drinking any potion made from your internal organs, you’re a madwoman.
Good that we were on the same page.
I thought back a few hours, to our madcap journey up to Hyndorin. Jay had hauled me through the Ways via physical contact, in spite of the fact that touching me produced clear signs of magickal disorder.
But that was outside, where Jay was comfortable and I was not. I’d messed him up because proximity to me had thrown his magickal balance out of whack.
Maybe I was overthinking this. Maybe, in here, all I needed to do was touch him, and I’d throw his magickal balance into whack. Or something.
‘Righto, Jay,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing else for it. It’s hug time.’ I held out my arms, smiling beatifically.
I received a look of narrow-eyed suspicion in return.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘Do you want to spend eternity as a hippogriff or not?’
Damn him, he actually thought it over.
Then he swept me up in a bone-creaking hug, the kind which lifted me a couple of inches off the floor.
‘Whoa,’ I said. ‘Having a beak isn’t that bad.’
Apparently it was, for he did not release me until I’d passed out from lack of oxygen.
Okay, no. He didn’t release me until the feathers were on the retreat and the beak was gone and those weird incorporeal wings had faded into the aether.
Then he dropped me. ‘Finally,’ he said, and I smiled into his reassuringly normal Jay-face once more.
He did not smile back. ‘Ves, do you have any idea what that hound of yours has gone and done?’
I stopped smiling. ‘Pup? No, why? Is she okay?’
‘Oh, she’s fine.’ He began, oddly, to laugh. Mild hysteria. ‘She’s done what she usually does, and scuttled her wriggly little way to a stash of treasure.’
‘That doesn’t sound too bad,’ I said cautiously.
‘I’ll give you a hint. It’s silver, and there’s quite a bit of it.’
‘What— wait, how did she not get ported outside? I thought you said—’ I looked at Luan, and was struck by the gobsmacked look on his face. ‘Not relevant. Lord Evemer? Are you all right?’
He visibly swallowed, and said in a constrained voice: ‘Did you say silver?’
12
‘Not just any silver,’ said Jay helpfully. ‘I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same kind as the lyre.’
‘That is entirely—’ said Luan, and stopped. ‘What kind of a hound circumvents my defences and finds its way straight to the most valuable artefacts in the building?’
‘She’s a nose-for-gold,’ I said quickly, remembering too late that I had glossed over Pup’s presence before.
His face set into disapproving lines. ‘I think you said you were not treasure hunters?’
‘We aren’t. It’s just Pup that has a few bad habits…’
‘And what manner of scholar keeps a nose-for-gold?’
A fair question. ‘She’s an academic oddity where we come from,’ I said, trying my best smile.
‘We aren’t here to steal your silver,’ said Jay irritably. ‘We came looking for Torvaston’s project, that’s all.’
‘That,’ said Luan in a terrible voice, ‘is our silver.’
Jay blinked. ‘…Oh.’
So the “Heart” was a dismantled pile of Silver with a capital S, and it was lying in a storeroom somewhere in this largely-empty tower. I remembered myself telling Wyr he was welcome to plunder at will once we got inside, and winced. All right, I hadn’t thought the place would prove to be inhabited, but that was the best excuse I had for my reckless promise. A cache of something so frighteningly valuable and powerful must never be permitted to fall into the hands of someone like him.
Earl Evemer and his compatriots had successfully protected it for centuries. It was our unauthorised presence here that put it at risk.
Way to go, team.
‘We should go,’ I said.
Jay looked sharply at me. ‘Go?’
‘What we came for no longer exists,’ I said. ‘Mission over. We can go back to Mandridore and tell them it’s a no go.’
‘We?’
For a second, I’d forgotten my no-fly state. ‘Erm.’ I looked around. ‘Where is Pup? You left her with the Silver?’
‘If you’d like to try prising her off that stuff, be my guest.’
I sighed. ‘I am very sorry,’ I said to Luan. ‘If we can retrieve my disgraceful thief of a Pup—’ (and, come to think of it, my intellectual thief of a book) ‘—We will get off your lawn, and stop complicating your day.’
Luan held up a hand. ‘Not so fast.’
I stared. ‘What?’
‘I would like a look at that lyre, please.’
I dithered. I could hardly blame him for asking,
but… I did not want to hand it over.
Then again, we stood here swearing blind we weren’t there to rob the place, and expected him to just trust our word, despite all apparent evidence to the contrary. It would be unbecoming to refuse to trust him for even five minutes with our articles of value.
I looked at Jay. He had hidden the thing; it was for him to decide whether or not to reveal it.
He looked quizzically back at me. I’m the new guy, his face (probably) said. Why are you making me decide, o mentor?
Because your guess is as good as mine, I signalled back.
He shrugged, and set the snuff box down. Which reminded me. ‘Hey, where in the tower did you get swept off to?’
‘Some kind of bedchamber,’ he said, counting downwards through the buttons on his shirt. ‘Or a museum. The place was practically preserved in aspic.’
A choked sound emerged from Luan.
‘You okay?’ I said.
‘A grand chamber?’ asked Luan.
‘Fit for a king,’ said Jay. ‘Probably literally.’
Luan groped for his chair, and sat back down. ‘His Majesty’s private quarters.’
I studied him. He’d turned white. ‘Why’s that so shocking?’
‘Because,’ he said faintly, ‘those rooms have been inaccessible since Torvaston died.’ He lunged suddenly, way fast for such an old man, and scooped up the snuff box that Jay had set down on the arm of my chair. ‘This must have belonged to His Majesty,’ he said, and his voice shook. Then he chuckled, though the almost maniacal glint in his eye took all the mirth out of the sound. ‘Not that we have nothing left of his personal possessions, but none of them have ever worked. Because he attuned the charm to… to a snuff box.’
‘And what a snuff box!’ said Jay, producing the damned lyre with a flourish.
All thoughts leaked out of my foolish brain, and time stopped. I stared like an idiot at the pretty thing, its curving frame gleaming like moon-touched silver, its strings rippling like sun-touched waters, and the cursed thing sang to me. The melody reverberated through my bones, and I knew I would remember those notes for the rest of my life.
Magick pulsed around me. I no longer saw Earl Evemer’s handsome, old-fashioned parlour, or not in such prosaic terms as walls and furniture and fireplaces. I saw the world as a flow of magick, colourless yet shimmering with all the colours in the world. Jay was a firework throwing off sparks — my doing, perhaps. Luan blended in, seamlessly, like a single thread in a complex, perfect tapestry.
I do not know how I might have appeared, for I could not see myself. But I felt right. Slotted in like the final piece in a jigsaw puzzle. Powerful.
I do not know what happened between the moment of Jay’s waving the lyre around, and the moment when he hid it behind its glamour once more. I came awake with a start, to find Jay looking unperturbed (good, Earl Evemer had not tried to make off with the lyre), and his lordship seated once again in his deep armchair, looking six ways shaken.
‘I would like very much to see His Majesty’s chambers,’ said Luan.
‘You do have the snuff box,’ I pointed out. He still held it clutched in his left hand.
His fingers opened as I spoke, and he offered it back to us. ‘And I have taken it without your permission.’
‘Do you need our permission?’ I said, uncertain. ‘It more rightly belongs to you than to us.’
But Luan shook his head. ‘I may not know why, but Torvaston had his reasons for leaving these things in your Britain. And he was of your world, not ours. If you are here at the behest of his natural heirs, then I will not lay claim to this box.’
I exchanged a look with Jay. ‘I can’t think of a single reason to object to your using it,’ I said.
‘Neither can I,’ agreed Jay.
Not that I didn’t suffer a moment’s disquiet. Why had Torvaston locked everyone out of his rooms, and left the key in our Britain instead?
But I couldn’t afford to start doubting Luan’s motives now. Apart from anything, I badly wanted to see those rooms, too.
‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘Oh,’ I added casually, ‘And I’d like to stop by that workshop on the way there. I may have, um, left something behind.’
Ten minutes later, I stood with Luan and Jay at a crossroads in the network of passages that ran throughout the tower. These four-way junctions functioned as transport points, Luan informed us, provided you either knew how to manipulate them, or you were carrying something that served as a token.
That didn’t explain how one of them had swept Pup away, but since no one was likely to have any explanation to offer for Goodie’s peculiar brand of larking about, I chose not to raise the issue.
Mauf lay snug in my shoulder bag. Snug and smug. ‘Miss Vesper!’ he had greeted me as I stole into the workshop. ‘I lay my intellectual riches at your exquisite feet.’
I’d stopped, surprised into immobility. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I,’ he said proudly, ‘have been very busy.’
If I didn’t know it to be impossible, I would have said he sounded drunk. Drunk on knowledge? Intoxicated by academia? Mauf had drunk deeply from the Well of Wisdom, and was now high as a kite.
I gave his front cover a soothing pat as I picked him up. ‘Just out of interest, could you actually read any of those texts?’
‘Not a word.’ He giggled.
I gave up.
He now lay asleep (supposedly) in the bottom of the bag. Once in a while I heard something like a stray chortle from somewhere in the vicinity of my right elbow.
Best to ignore it.
‘Forgive me,’ said Luan, paused on the brink of taking the plunge into Torvaston’s Royal Apartments. ‘Is your bag… laughing?’
‘Long story,’ I said.
He just looked at me, and I felt a bit guilty. I had just used Mauf to thieve Hyndorin secrets, even if I hadn’t taken anything of material value. I had no business standing there like butter wouldn’t melt.
Then again, if the snuff box was more rightly our property than his, because our Britain and natural successors and representatives of the Troll Court, yada yada, then surely works related to Torvaston’s projects qualified under the same rule. Right?
Sometimes I envied Jay his utter moral certainty. It did make him a bit of a stick in the mud sometimes, but at least he was spared these exhausting bouts of wrestling with his conscience.
It being rather too late in the day to set about being a goody two-shoes, I abandoned that line of thought.
Luan was hesitating.
‘Everything all right?’ I said, when time passed and he did not move.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is only that… no one here has seen these rooms in hundreds of years. Their very existence has become the province of more myth than fact.’
‘That makes it exciting,’ I offered, bouncing a bit on my toes.
He nodded, and straightened purposefully. I wasn’t fooled. His hands were shaking.
People really revered Torvaston, didn’t they? I hoped he was the kind of person who deserved all this adulation. As far as I could determine, his track record was a bit too varied to merit it.
‘He must have had a really magnetic personality,’ I muttered.
‘Torvaston?’ said Luan. ‘He was like a god.’
With which bombshell, he stepped into the crossroads vortex and vanished, sweeping Jay and I away with him.
13
To call our next destination a Royal Bedchamber would be to grossly understate the impact of the place.
It wasn’t fit for a king so much as a… well, a god. In size alone, it staggered me. Okay, Torvaston was a troll, and they aren’t short, but even so: how much space does one person need? We emerged in a chamber the approximate size of a football field (yes, I exaggerate, but not by much). Dominating the centre of that space was a bed large enough to sleep about thirty human-sized people. Its four posts were trees, crystalline and sparkling but clearly tree-shaped, and apparently alive.
Canopies of cobwebby gauze hung about it, and its pillows and blankets had the kind of plushness a Ves could cheerfully sink into forever.
I’ve never seen an article of furniture so clearly scream magick!
The rest of the décor was of a piece with it. Lamps of contorted crystal hung from the ceiling and erupted from the walls, glowing under their own power; carpets covered the hardwood floor, their patterns and colours shifting as I looked at them; cabinets held artefacts safely behind glass, though every time I glanced their way I beheld a different array of objects.
Etc. If this was the lifestyle of a king in a magick-soaked enclave, I could definitely see its upside.
Luan walked through that room as though he walked in the presence of a god. His soft-footed, wide-eyed, reverential behaviour unnerved me. Did he think Torvaston was going to show up?
Was Torvaston going to show up?
‘You look petrified,’ Jay said, glancing at me.
I composed my features. ‘It’s the word “god” that did it,’ I said.
‘And?’
‘Any sane person is terrified of gods.’
‘Does that include the giddy kind you keep referring to?’
‘A degree of healthy irreverence is good for a person,’ I retorted.
Jay made no answer, save for his by-now-familiar eyebrow quirk that said whatever you say, Ves.
I shut my mouth.
Jay was right about the bedchamber more nearly resembling a museum. Like the rest of the tower (or as much as we had seen of it), it was meticulously well-kept, without a speck of dust or dirt anywhere. Considering these rooms had been sealed for centuries, however, that fact registered as highly unusual. Moreover, it had the air of a museum about it, of a place not merely dusted and swept but preserved. As though the effects of time had been, if not outright stopped, then at least slowed down.
Strong magicks indeed.
I wondered again why Torvaston had closed off this room, while apparently going to some trouble to preserve it. For whom? The chances that anyone would manage to follow his obscure trail of clues and oblique references and stray magickal bits-and-bobs were vanishingly small, which was why hundreds of years had passed before anyone had done so.
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