The Wonders of Vale Read online

  People kept saying that to me lately. ‘Will do,’ I called after her, and stuffed the stocking into my pocket. Next stop, Mellicent Makepeace.

  4

  ‘Wow, Millie,’ I said, and whistled. ‘You. Look. Fine.’

  When Alban had promised to see Millie Makepeace — or rather, the two-hundred-year-old farmhouse she haunted — appointed a royal residence, I’d taken it as a convenient bribe. The circumstances at the time had been a trifle pressing, after all. Apparently he’d meant every word, for Millie had been sumptuously refitted.

  I mean, her exterior walls were much improved: window frames repainted, glass and doors replaced, stonework repaired, that kind of thing. But the house was still an ordinary, modestly-sized farmhouse.

  Inside was a different matter. Upon walking into her parlour, I received an eyeful of polished mahogany parquet floor strewn with plush rugs; handsomely wainscoted walls; long windows fitted with silken drapes; and an array of elegant (and to my semi-expert eye, authentic) eighteenth-century furniture. The best kind. Ornate couches, gilded and upholstered in pale blue damask. Mahogany side-tables with scrolly bronze carvings. A towering, polished cabinet bearing a vast, elaborate mirror. Etc.

  The works.

  ‘Fit for a queen,’ Jay agreed, smiling at me. He sat ensconced in a pretty, curved-back chair upholstered in silvery damask, the pages of Torvaston’s book open on his lap.

  Am I not? agreed Millie happily. Her Majesty herself sat in that very-same chair, Mr. Patel!

  ‘Clearly I’ve chosen the best, then,’ Jay said.

  Emellana Rogan sat in a matching chair on the other side of Millie’s majestic, carved fireplace. It was lucky the house had been refurbished for use by the Troll Court, I thought, as the furniture was all suitably sized up to accommodate their greater proportions. Ms. Rogan would be in no way inconvenienced — and neither would the chairs.

  ‘Any luck?’ she said.

  I retrieved the stocking and waved it briefly in the air. ‘Best we could do. Where’s pup?’

  Emellana gestured at her lap, and I drifted closer. Pup was curled up there, fast asleep. So dwarfed was she in contrast to Emellana’s size, I hadn’t noticed her.

  To my shame, I experienced a momentary stab of pure jealousy. What was Goodie doing sleeping with adorable, puppy trust all over someone who wasn’t me? Or Jay?

  Still, she looked happy and so did Em, so I swallowed the feeling. Unworthy, Ves.

  ‘Checklist,’ I announced. ‘One pup with improbable gold-sniffing powers: check. One Lady of Mandridore with improbable magick-sniffing powers: check.’

  ‘One unreasonably talkative but conveniently knowledgeable book: check,’ said Jay, and I spotted the purple-clad form of Mauf lying by his chair.

  ‘Unreasonably?’ said Mauf, in a dangerous tone.

  ‘Conveniently, wittily, superbly talkative,’ Jay amended.

  Mauf riffled his pages, and slammed shut his front cover with a theatrical puff of dust.

  Jay suppressed a grin. ‘One set of incomplete kingly notes on the sources of magick: check.’ He tapped the paper in his lap.

  ‘Wands?’ I said. ‘Geniusware from our favourite eccentric?’

  ‘Double check,’ said Jay.

  I looked at Emellana, who nodded serenely. I looked forward to seeing what kind of a Wand she carried.

  ‘Great. Fabulously expensive scroll-case etched with map of destination?’

  ‘Check,’ said Jay again. ‘I’ve put it with Mauf.’

  Not a bad idea. I wasn’t sure if Mauf could absorb maps the way he could absorb text, but it wouldn’t hurt to try. Just in case we were careless enough to lose a scroll-case that must be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

  I shuddered inwardly at that thought, and swiftly reminded myself that the map was actually the valuable part.

  ‘Dangerously beautiful moonsilver lyre?’ I said.

  Jay developed a guarded look. ‘I’ve got it.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘You don’t need to know that right now.’

  Fair enough. ‘Unicorn-summoning pipes…’ I began, and then frowned. ‘Wait. Can I summon Adeline from a different Britain?’ I was staring, for some reason, at Jay.

  ‘How the hell should I know?’ Jay said.

  ‘Fair. Sorry. Hang on.’ I left the house again, fished out my silver syrinx pipes, and blew an airy melody upon them. I mean, I’m usually a fan of the Trial and Error approach, but this was one occasion where it had to be a bad idea. What if we got there and I found Addie couldn’t hear me from all the way over wherever-the-fifth-Britain was? Or couldn’t reach me?

  Would the absence of one unicorn make or break the mission? Probably not, but who wanted to risk it when you were working for the queen?

  Not me. And Milady had specifically recommended taking Addie along.

  Addie arrived on foot, this time (on hoof…?). She came trotting between two of the great, ancient oaks that line our driveway, head held high, silvery mane streaming in the wind. The balmy sunshine of early June glittered charmingly off her pale, coiled horn.

  She came right up to me and shoved her face into my chest. Bump.

  ‘Should I be calling you Ylariane?’ I said, running my fingers through her silky mane. I’d recently learned that to be her true name — or at least, one of them. Apparently she was a venerable old lady; who knew how many friends she’d made, or how many names she’d been given, in all that time? Ylariane was her name among the Yllanfalen. Pretty. Ethereal. Fitting.

  I couldn’t get used to it.

  ‘Addie,’ I said decisively. ‘I haven’t got any chips for you. Let me be up front about that right now.’

  Adeline snorted, most inelegantly.

  ‘And,’ I went on. ‘In a minute I’m going to make you walk through a human-sized door into a perambulatory Royal Troll Residence and sit tight while we fly through the aether into Elsewhere. You okay with all that?’

  My favourite unicorn sneezed on me.

  ‘Great!’ I said heartily. ‘Let’s go.’ I took hold of a section of her mane and wandered doorwards. Addie placidly followed after — until we came to the door, which Millie invitingly opened for us. There she stopped.

  ‘Please?’ I wheedled. ‘It’s nice in here. Fit for a unicorn-friend-of-kings. Come on.’

  Addie gave me the kind of flat stare that heralded immediate doom. I pictured myself nicely diced into bite-sized cubes, and swallowed.

  ‘Righto. Second, then.’

  I made a call. ‘Val? Logistical problem here. Can you get hold of the kitchens for me?’

  Ten minutes later, Addie’s chips arrived. I’d pictured maybe a bowl full, but the kitchens had sent an enormous tub of them. There must’ve been three kilos, at least.

  I stole one. Fresh, crisp and hot.

  Perfect.

  ‘Thanks,’ I beamed at the obliging kitchen staff: two bright young things, both too obviously thrilled at experiencing a real unicorn sighting. They retreated a ways, and stopped.

  Well, okay. I didn’t really want to do this with an audience, but given the promptitude with which they’d delivered Addie’s snacks, I hadn’t the heart to dismiss them. Let them witness my humiliation if they must.

  ‘Miss Adeline,’ I said, backing up quickly towards the door. Addie’s nose was already twitching; she’d caught the scent. ‘Every single chip in this tub is yours if you follow me through that door.’ I thought a moment, and in all honesty had to add: ‘Almost every chip. One or two are mine.’

  Addie drifted towards me, as though drawn against her will. I quickened my steps, unwilling to become the splattered victim of an out-of-control-unicorn charge, and almost fell over Millie’s lintel.

  Jay caught me from behind. ‘Steady. If you must drop the chips, at least drop them all over the floor in here, not out there.’

  ‘You know what? Great idea.’ I tipped up the tub, letting a stream of chips fall all over the threshold. The rest I strewed all over
the beautiful parquet in the short hallway beyond, and then through the parlour.

  Addie, wonderful girl, dipped her head and went through the fallen chips like a lawnmower. With a brief helping hand from Jay, she was through the door and storming the hall, devouring chips at the rate of at least eight per second.

  Jay slammed the door behind her. ‘Go!’ he called.

  Where to, good ladies and gentlemen? Millie had apparently had a manners upgrade, too.

  ‘Whitmore!’ I said, abandoning the tub to Addie’s predations. ‘Melmidoc’s Whitmore, please.’

  Departing in twelve seconds, said Millie brightly.

  And with a stomach-dropping whoosh, an unpromising rumble of stonework, and a little light chamber music, off we went.

  I… am sinking, said Millie shortly afterwards.

  ‘What?’ I leapt up from my involuntary recumbent posture on the parlour floor, and dashed to the window.

  Beyond it I saw the bluish-grey expanse of an English sea, and… well, that was it.

  ‘Millie, how close to the water are we?’

  I was aiming for the top of the cliff, said Millie, without quite answering my question.

  ‘And what happened?’

  I missed.

  Jay joined me at the window. ‘Can you jump again?’

  Jump, Mr. Patel?

  ‘You know.’ Jay made up-and-over gestures. ‘Travel again. Up a bit.’

  I whirled about and ran down the hall. As I’d feared, water was beginning to seep under the door. ‘Millie, you need to move. Now.’

  I am tired! Make me stop sinking!

  ‘We cannot, but you can. Come on, Millie.’ The house was beginning to lean, slowly but surely, to one side as it sank. ‘I know this is hard for you, but—’

  Ohh, said Millie, cutting me off. She had gone in an instant from half-panicked whining to… purringly appreciative. Very good, thank you.

  Bemused, I went back into the parlour. Jay was hastily scooping up Mauf and the scroll-case and moving them farther away from the windows and doors; Addie huddled against the far wall, her rump bumping the mahogany sideboard, sniffing sadly at the empty chip tub; and Emellana leaned casually against one wall, watching my unicorn with a smirk of amusement.

  ‘Millie?’ I said. ‘What?’

  Emellana gently patted the wall, and Millie said: Just a little more…

  I raised an eyebrow in Emellana’s general direction.

  ‘She needed a boost,’ she said, as though that explained everything.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Supplied it.’

  What had she done, applied some kind of magickal jumpstart to a… house?

  Apparently, yes, for the farmhouse lurched and shifted, and with a horrible sloshing, sucking noise of loosened sand and swirling saltwater, we rocketed off the beach and upwards.

  Too fast.

  I clutched at the nearest sofa, waiting for a crashing sound and a sickening impact as we collided with the cliff face.

  There came a crunch and a grinding noise, and the house tipped sideways, sending the lot of us sliding abruptly left.

  ‘Millie!’ I yelled as I hit the wall with a thud.

  Sorry! She trilled.

  We tipped back to the right. I collided, somehow, with Jay, and the pair of us went tumbling down.

  I spared a moment’s fervent prayer that Adeline wouldn’t be joining us down there.

  Whitmore Cliff! Millie announced, with enviable serenity.

  ‘Thanks,’ I groaned, and peeled myself off Jay. Back on my feet, I took a brief inventory of my wounds.

  A few things hurt, particularly my left shoulder where I’d hit the wall. I flexed and turned; nothing was broken.

  Right, then.

  Jay was vertical; Emellana, too, who still held my pup in her capable hands. All appeared sound, so I turned my attention to Adeline.

  ‘You deserve another vat of chips after this,’ I told her as I coaxed her up from the floor. ‘But you shan’t have one, or you’ll be as fat as a barrel.’

  Adeline whinnied and stamped, head tossing, eyes wild.

  ‘…I think I’d better get her out of here,’ I decided, nimbly avoiding her kicking hooves.

  ‘Post-haste,’ Jay agreed.

  All I had to do, as it turned out, was open the front door. Addie ran down the little hallway at a canter, and hit the grass beyond at full gallop.

  I followed.

  Millie had contrived to hop to about the highest point on the island; Melmidoc’s shining spire towered not far away, and the treacherous sea was reduced to a distantly glittering blue-grey ribbon on the horizon.

  One corner of the farmhouse was rather crushed, its newly-mended stonework crumbling. ‘Lucky you’ve got royal patrons now, Millie,’ I grumbled.

  Jay emerged from the house, carrying Mauf and the scroll-case, both of which he put into my hands. The pages of Torvaston’s translated book stuck out of Mauf’s front cover.

  I stuck them into my trusty shoulder-bag. ‘The lyre?’ I asked, when he made no move to go back inside.

  He just winked at me.

  ‘That… that isn’t an answer.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘We aren’t leaving it in the house?’

  ‘No, certainly not.’

  ‘Then… Emellana’s got it?’

  He merely smiled at me.

  ‘I dislike secrets, sir. You should know that.’

  ‘Untrue. You love secrets — except when they’re withheld from you.’

  ‘Which is exactly what you’re doing.’

  ‘It’s for a good cause.’

  ‘That being?’

  ‘Your sanity.’

  I considered that. ‘I concede the point,’ I reluctantly said.

  Emellana emerged into the cool air, still clutching the pup. She did not appear inclined to transfer Goodie into my care, and pup herself just lay there, like an inert and smiling log.

  I had to scowl.

  ‘I suppose it’s all right for pup to ride with you for a bit,’ I said, as graciously as I could, which wasn’t very.

  Emellana gave me a serene smile. ‘She is very tired.’

  To which, I had no particular response to offer.

  5

  Ashdown Castle was gone.

  Believe me, I checked thoroughly. I don’t know where I thought Zareen might have managed to hide a huge medieval castle-manor on an open beach, but I trawled up and down the sand anyway, twice over, before I was prepared to concede that it really wasn’t there.

  This was good, for it meant (hopefully) that Zareen had succeeded in finding a better, permanent home for the place. Considering its weight, it really shouldn’t have been left any longer on sandy ground.

  It was bad because that meant Zareen and George were nowhere within reach.

  So much for our easy (maybe) link to Miranda.

  We made a slightly forlorn group for a moment there, Emellana and Jay and Adeline and I, faced with the utter absence of an entire castle, and our friends with it.

  Well, Jay and I did. Adeline attempted to eat a crab, and swiftly regretted it. Emellana maintained an enigmatic silence.

  ‘I suppose Melmidoc might know something,’ I offered, half-heartedly.

  ‘Do you think Zareen was much in contact with him?’ said Jay.

  ‘Not really.’ Zar wasn’t the type for dutiful checkins, especially with someone she would consider wholly uninvolved with her business, and therefore irrelevant. ‘But it’s somewhere to start. Even if he doesn’t know, he can help. I mean, where would Miranda go, if she’d stayed here?’

  ‘Wherever the rarest magickal beasts are,’ said Jay promptly.

  ‘Right. And Melmidoc would know that, for sure.’

  ‘You are trying to find a colleague?’ said Emellana.

  I grimaced. ‘Ex-colleague.’

  Emellana’s raised brow invited elucidation, which I provided. It made for a surprisingly brief story.

  �
�Why do you need her?’ said Emellana, gazing thoughtfully over the sea.

  ‘We don’t,’ I said, with a ferocity that surprised even me.

  Jay gave a slight cough. ‘Milady insisted upon it.’

  ‘And you always do what Milady requires.’

  ‘Not… always,’ honesty compelled me to admit. ‘But mostly. And she is right about Miranda’s expertise. If we find griffins or unicorns, we may be glad of her presence.’ Maybe.

  Emellana said nothing. Her silence proved more eloquent than any counter-argument might have been.

  I watched her for a moment. Her serenity was… slightly unnerving. I mean, here we were on the mythical fifth Britain, a place even the Court at Mandridore had known nothing about until recently. A place overflowing with magick, brimming with all the lost arts and artefacts and beasts we could only dream of. I was itching to get off the isle of Whitmore, at last, and explore what lay on the mainland beyond the sea. Jay, I knew, was feeling the same.

  Emellana Rogan, however, was… unimpressed. She stared out over the sea as though it were just a sea, any sea, and not teeming with magick and probably full of selkies and mermaids and naiads and… ooh, what if there were mermaids down there?

  There could be.

  ‘Jay! Do you think there are mermaids in those waters?’ I said.

  He gave me the side-eye. ‘No idea. Let’s pop down and check.’ He started to remove his boots.

  I grabbed his arm. ‘Not now. Later.’

  His eyes grew wide. ‘You’re actually serious.’

  ‘Weren’t you? Oh.’ Abashed, I folded my arms, and attempted to mimic Emellana’s cool, wordless stare over the water. A balmy sea-breeze blew back my hair. ‘I knew that.’

  Jay grinned. ‘Do you want to try the stocking trick or not?’

  ‘The wha— oh.’ In the bustle and confusion of departure, I’d managed to forget about Miranda’s stocking. I dragged it out of my pocket, and cast about for the pup.

  She was thirty metres up the beach, snout down in the sand, digging furiously.

  ‘Hey, she’s found something,’ I said, and set off after her at a trot.

  Jay followed after. ‘Imagine what it could be. A gold crown studded with jewels. A priceless gemstone Wand. A cache of selkie’s pearls.’