The Road to Farringale Read online

  We had to go through the usual process of requesting entrance, of course. I laid my palm against the boulder and announced us. When that didn’t work, Jay tried.

  We were not surprised to find that the silent hills remained silent. There was no promising creak of an opening door, no gust of air to welcome us into a yawning portal.

  ‘Breaking and entering it is, then,’ I said, with a sense of satisfaction I could not disguise. I can’t help it: I love doing things the sneaky way.

  Jay was not so thrilled. He did not object, for Milady had essentially ordered us to get into these Enclaves one way or another. But he was visibly uncomfortable as I employed my unlocking charm upon the boulder and…

  …and nothing. It did not work. Oh, the key worked all right; it glimmered with that promising aura of power, and the boulder glittered in response. There was communication between the two charms, as there should have been, but the boulder declined to be affected by it. The rock remained untouched, stubbornly inert and immoveable.

  ‘Some burglar you are,’ said Jay.

  I put the key away. ‘On to Plan C.’ That skreerat had to have come from somewhere. Magickal beasts don’t typically wander the wilds as freely as, say, wood mice or stoats or whatever. They mostly stick to the Dells, which are pockets of Hidden landscapes folded between the Ways. Finnan Enclave had firmly closed its outer doors upon the non-magickal world, as they all did, but its regular entrance would undoubtedly be situated on the edge of one of these Dells. If we could not walk straight into the Enclave, we’d have to get into Finnan Dell first and then break into the Troll settlement. Their back door, so to speak, was unlikely to be so well protected as their front door.

  I went back to the spot where I’d seen the skreerat, and kept walking that way. It wasn’t too long before I saw it again: a glimpse of pinkish-grey fur whisking into the concealing cover of a cluster of frondy grasses.

  I delved into my satchel again, removed an object which markedly resembled an ordinary torch (because, in essentials, it was), and switched it on. Its beam blazed forth, illuminating the grassy path the skreerat had followed in a haze of misty light.

  ‘Is there anything you aren’t carrying in that bag?’ said Jay.

  ‘Nope.’ I waved the torch around a bit, but the quality of the light did not change.

  Hm.

  ‘The wonderful thing about the Society is its forward-thinking attitude,’ I told Jay as I clomped around in circles, throwing hazy light everywhere. ‘Somewhere in the attic is Orlando’s lab. Nobody is allowed in there, not ever, but the most wondrous things come out. Including this torch. It’s a hybrid, see? It is electronic in its basic function, but Orlando blends these things with charms in some unfathomable way and comes out with totally unique effects.’ There: a flicker of bright energy in the near distance, lancing through the brumous glow like a lightning strike. ‘This particular one illuminates traces of magickal energy, making them visible to the eye in ways they usually aren’t. See that?’

  Jay saw it. He was off before I could say another word, striding ahead of me at such speed I found it hard to keep up.

  About twenty seconds later he disappeared.

  I found the spot where I had last seen him, and shone my torch about one more time. There was a long, vertical split in the air: a thin, wavering line about twelve feet high, traced in white light.

  I turned sideways, and fell through the tear in the atmosphere.

  There are those who manage this procedure with rather more grace than I. I can only achieve a chaotic tumble, so of course I ended in an undignified heap upon the floor of the Dell beyond. I chose not to worry about what Jay might think of this display of clumsiness and quickly picked myself up, dusted bits of grass off my coat with studied nonchalance, and took a look around.

  Jay, thankfully, was about ten feet off, and not looking my way. No wonder, either, for when one is surrounded by such spectacular beauty, why waste your glances upon me? Finnan Dell was like Glenfinnan, only more colourful. We stood at the top of a low, sloping hill; ranged around us was a lusciously rolling landscape composed of several more peaks and dales, all dusted with heathery grasses ranging in hue from serene jade to vivid emerald. Clumps of bushes painted in shades of blue were dotted here and there, sprouting spring blossoms in glorious profusion. The air was balmy, and held that slightly hushed, hazy quality the outer world only displays at the height of summer, and early in the morning. A lake lay spread at the bottom of the valley before us, adding the clean scent of fresh water to the bouquet of floral nectar I was luxuriating in.

  ‘The Enclave is this way,’ said Jay in a no-nonsense tone, proving once again that he has no heart for beauty.

  I fell in behind him anyway. We did have a job to do.

  And there we were, faced with another dreaming hillside, though this one was attractively sun-drenched. Finnan Enclave’s Dellside door was another huge, black boulder embedded into the hill’s face. No one answered this one, either, but my excellent key worked like a charm (…so to speak). The boulder groaned mightily and heaved itself aside, and in we went.

  My first impression of Finnan Enclave was that it was, unbelievably, messier than South Moors. The winding, curved stone streets were familiar enough, though their houses were of a different architectural style: stone and wood-built with little arches, and some intriguing polychromatic brickwork. Grand, handsome and sweet in equal measure, and most attractive. I’d live in such a house.

  But those streets were thick with debris. A heavy, not unpleasant scent of compost hung in the air, the source of which proved to be the piles of long-rotted something heaped up in every sweeping corner. A thick, oppressive silence hung over everything, and though we walked down street after street, we saw nobody about. No one at all.

  Jay and I exchanged twin looks of concern. ‘I think it is time for a little more breaking and entering,’ I suggested.

  I expected a refusal from Jay, and he did hesitate, but finally he nodded. ‘I don’t think we’ll even need your key, here. Look.’ He indicated the nearest house, whose grand elmwood door hung slightly ajar.

  Not a good sign.

  ‘None of this mess is litter,’ I said, upon a sudden realisation.

  Jay, already halfway up the path to the house, stopped. ‘What?’

  ‘There’s no litter. This is all leaves, twigs, branches, dead flowers… swept in off the hillsides, probably. There is nothing here that looks like it was dropped by somebody living.’

  Jay frowned, and made for the house again at a half-run. I followed.

  The house was gorgeous inside, all wood panelling and sweeping archways. There was an entrance hall hung with tapestries, a dining room, two parlours, a handsome stone kitchen… whoever lived here lacked for neither money nor taste, clearly.

  Only, it was empty. Not only were there no signs of life, there were no signs there had ever been any life. Everything was dust and desolation, like some kind of show home that had fallen out of use.

  ‘This is weird,’ said Jay, and I agreed, for it was weird.

  It wasn’t just that house, either, for a quick survey of the next few along the street told the same story. They were all empty, dust-laden, abandoned.

  ‘This entire town is dead,’ said Jay wonderingly, when we regained the street.

  ‘As a dodo,’ I agreed.

  Jay took out his phone. ‘We’ve got a big problem here.’

  8

  That changed things. After Finnan, there was no more wandering through the spring sunshine admiring the scenery. We had several more distant Enclaves to visit, and every reason to expect trouble at most of them.

  Jay called Nell, and gave her a terse, hurried report. She went away to consult with Milady, and called back barely ten minutes later. Jay listened in taut silence.

  ‘There’s a team on the way to investigate Finnan,’ he said when the call was done, shoving his phone back into his pocket. ‘And South Moors. We’re to go on to Darrowdale.�
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  ‘All right.’

  ‘That’s in Gloucestershire,’ he added helpfully.

  ‘I knew that.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No.’

  There might have been a roll of the eye in answer, but I couldn’t be sure, because Jay turned his back on me and marched off.

  The disappointing part about the Ways is that you cannot drift away to one of them from literally Anywhere. In that, I suppose it isn’t much different from driving. You can go more or less anywhere you like by car, but if you get out and wander away from your vehicle, you’ll have to go find it again before you can drive on.

  At least Jay and I did not have to contend with the misery that is traffic. It was, however, necessary for us to trawl our way back to the henge, at a pace which left both of us sweating and winded. From there, Jay whisked us off before either of us had chance to catch our breath.

  The process was less disordering the second time, at least for me. I was no longer alarmed by the whirling winds, or the disorienting sensation of far-too-rapid movement. My insides objected a little less, too.

  Jay, though, looked every bit as distressed as the first time. He spent a half-minute or so doubled over, elbows on his knees, shaking and gulping in air like a drowning man.

  I began to feel concerned for him. We had several more Enclaves yet to visit, and must contrive to travel to at least three a day. Would the impact upon him grow more bearable, or less so? Would he cope?

  I knew better than to express any of these thoughts, though. We were strangers to one another, near enough; would he hear concern in my words, or doubts as to his competency? I could not guess, and therefore did not take the risk.

  ‘We’re looking for the Giant’s Stone,’ said Jay once he had dragged himself upright. ‘I think that’s what they call it, around here.’ The henge he had brought us to was even more underwhelming than the last: just a circle of earthworks, no standing monuments of any kind. Had there never been any, or had the remnants faded with the passage of time? The henge was situated in the kind of copse that could exist pretty much anywhere in Britain: a raggety cluster of birch and oak trees randomly spread about, the floor carpeted in ivy and ferns. I could only take Jay’s word for it that we were in Gloucestershire — or, in fact, that there was a henge there at all, for the ground was so overgrown with ivy, I saw little but an indeterminate array of dips and slopes.

  The Giant’s Stone, though, was much more distinct: twin slabs of ancient stone, prettily grown over with moss. I suppose they did look rather like sleeping giants; was that why they had been given the name? Or had somebody once seen an unglamoured troll hereabouts, and misinterpreted the vision? Happily for us, the Stone was not too far from the henge we’d used, perhaps only a mile. Still, it felt far enough away under the circumstances. I am by no means unfit, but I’m not a jogger.

  I made a mental note to take up running when I got home. Apparently Jay and I were to be working together for a while, and with him… for all his dissatisfaction with the stairs, I was starting to think I might need to up my game.

  Following my earlier lead, Jay set his palm to the nearest stone and entreated entrance. And…

  …entrance was granted. Instantly. One of the stones ponderously rolled aside, revealing a grand subterranean entryway. Or in other words, a dirt tunnel heading deep underground.

  ‘That’s refreshing,’ I said. ‘How lovely and hospitable.’

  But Jay was frowning. ‘I don’t think so. It’s more like the door was open anyway. I just gave it a little shove.’

  Nobody leaves their front door open like that, not intentionally. My heart flickered with alarm. Jay disappeared into the downward-sloping tunnel and I followed; we all but ran the quarter-mile or so until the tall, earth-walled tunnel opened out into Darrowdale Enclave.

  There is a large, populous Troll Enclave somewhere else in Gloucestershire: the Enclave of the Forest of Dean. It, too, is subterranean, spread across a network of natural caverns beneath the forest. Apparently Gloucestershire trolls tend to be underground dwellers, for the smaller, lesser-known Darrowdale is much the same. We stepped out into a large cavern, its ceiling so far above our heads I couldn’t begin to imagine how far up it was. The rock walls were of mottled colours, scattered with chunks of raw iron ore and daubed with reddish purple ochre. The houses here were built into the rock walls, sloping structures made from irregular stone blocks fitted into place like some kind of Tetris puzzle. They had made significant use of the ochre, I judged, for red, purple and yellowish colours predominated in the paints and stones they had used.

  Darrowdale was not abandoned. The trolls there strongly resembled the inhabitants of South Moors, only they were… worse. Jay and I walked the length of a wide main street unchallenged; its residents watched us pass with dull, uninterested eyes and made no move to stop us, to welcome us or to talk to us at all. I saw one old lady stretched across a low bench positioned in a pretty square at the end of the street; she lay covered with crocheted blankets, and looked as though she had not moved in a long time. In fact, she looked as though she may no longer be capable of movement at all. Only the faintest rising and falling of the blanket told me she lived at all: she was still breathing.

  Everywhere we looked, the trolls of Darrowdale drifted in some kind of stupor. Many sat slumped upon benches or chairs or even upon the earthy, rock-inset floors, unmoving and uninterested in moving. Those who were still on their feet slouched and shuffled their way around, as though the effort of putting one foot in front of the other was almost insurmountably difficult. If nobody was speaking to us, they were not speaking to each other either, for the Enclave was eerily quiet.

  ‘No one’s doing anything,’ whispered Jay, appalled.

  It was an appalling sight. So much life, there, in that populous little town, and yet no life at all.

  ‘That’s not quite true,’ I replied, struck by a sudden realisation. ‘They are eating. Look.’ The square we were standing in was ringed with houses; a suit-clad troll sat before one of them upon a stone bench, a chunk of raw meat in one hand. He ate with no apparent pleasure whatsoever, no relish, no attention for whatever he was eating. His jaws moved slowly, chewing his food with a methodical, mechanical determination to imbibe.

  The image was faintly obscene, perhaps because it was so incongruous. His suit, though in dire need of laundering, was neat and smart and looked quite new; his house, too, had obviously seen a lot of care over the years. But he clutched his hunk of meat in a clawed grip, heedless of the blood that ran over his fingers and down his wrist to stain the cuffs of his white shirt. He was so expressionless I might have taken him for a statue, were he not moving. His teeth were stained, and flecked with torn-off flesh and blood.

  Jay eyed him with poorly concealed disgust. ‘Trolls aren’t normally given to eating their meat raw, are they?’

  ‘Well, you’ve met Baron Alban. Do you think he’d go for that?’

  ‘He did say that trolls will eat pretty much anything.’

  ‘So they will. Lightly fried in butter, delicately sauteed, oven-roasted, a la sous vide, you name it. There is a reason why the Society employs a couple of troll chefs.’

  ‘Then why are they eating raw meat?’

  The suited troll wasn’t the only one. Now that I thought to look for it, it was everywhere: most of the people we could see had a chunk of something raw and bleeding in one hand, even if they had yet to muster the energy to actually consume it. I took a closer look at the old lady on her bench, and saw that she had a morsel of something red and glistening clenched between her teeth. ‘Good question.’

  ‘And why are they all eating, all the time? Especially when they aren’t doing anything else.’

  ‘Also a good question.’ I approached the troll in his suit, moving slowly and carefully. I didn’t want to startle him; that would be neither to his benefit, nor mine.

  I needn’t have taken such care. He did not even look at me as I drew nea
r, only continued his grim war of attrition against the meat he held.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘Good afternoon. We come from the Society for Magickal Heritage, in Yorkshire. May we ask you a couple of questions?’

  I was not particularly expecting a response, nor did I get one. But he tried. His gaze flicked to me, and he spent some ten or fifteen seconds merely looking at my face. Then his mouth moved. At first I thought he was chewing again, but no. He made several attempts to form words, his lips struggling to shape syllables which did not emerge.

  At length, he abandoned this effort and went back to his meat.

  I frowned, noticing something else. The fabric of that natty suit hung oddly. The fit was wrong. That alone is no surprise; few people buy bespoke tailored suits anymore, they are largely purchased off-the-peg. When you do that, who knows what you are getting yourself into? But a perfectly-fitted ensemble isn’t likely to be it.

  This was different. This troll had lost weight since he’d bought that suit. A lot of weight. The folds of fabric hung off him.