by ‘Those glaistigs?’ I heard Jay mutter near my ear. ‘I get the feeling they’re disinclined to accept defeat.’
‘Dance-off’s still on,’ I agreed.
‘And I’d say we’ve been bested,’ said Zareen.
I shook my head. Vehemently. ‘If there’s one rule I live by, it’s this: never accept defeat in a dance-off against legions of the undead.’
And, hey, we tried. Jay played the Bee Gees and Donna Summer and we threw some shapes. We were a perfect disco-dancing dream team, but we were outnumbered a thousand to one and those glaistigs are smart. Why bother coming up with your own routines when you could just copy the other guy?
Everything we did, they did too.
I’ll say this: if you’ve never witnessed five-thousand mostly decayed corpses perform a ‘Saturday Night Fever’routine in perfect unison, you haven’t lived.
And while I’ve rarely been more entirely thrilled in my life, I couldn’t disagree when Jay finally said: ‘Ves? I think we’ve reached a point where this could go on all night.’
Regretfully, I concurred. ‘But I can’t tell you how much it hurts me to be beaten at my own dance-battle game.’
We stopped dancing.
So did our opponents. Instantly.
Hmm.
‘All right,’ I called. ‘We concede, I suppose.’
Silvessen’s voice answered. ‘That makes the contest a draw, does it not?’
I winced a bit as I replied. ‘Yes, yes it does.’
‘But I perceive that you have already availed yourselves of the boon you were to ask of us.’
I wondered how she knew that. Had they been watching us while we’d worked, or had the effects of the regulator’s installation been noticeable all the way out at the haunted house?
‘How about you win a prize, too?’ I offered. ‘Everybody wins.’
‘A boon?’
‘A boon.’
Zareen made a choking noise. ‘Ves, you don’t offer an enraged glaistig a carte blanche. Have I taught you nothing?’
‘It’s a fair deal,’ I protested. ‘Same deal they gave us.’
‘It is fair,’ Silvessen agreed, ringingly. I still couldn’t see her, or her fellows. Her voice echoed out of the air, impossibly amplified.
The skeletons hadn’t moved. They had frozen from the moment we had ceased to dance, as though controlled by a puppeteer who’d lost interest and wandered off.
‘Nice work with the, um, villagers,’ I offered, gesturing at the surrounding horde of the undead. ‘Very neat.’
A long pause followed. ‘True, I called them,’ Silvessen finally answered. ‘Some of them.’
‘Some of them?’
‘The regulator,’ Emellana said from behind me, ‘amplified the effect somewhat.’
Oh.
Silvessen hadn’t summoned five-thousand dead villagers. We had.
Sort of.
‘That was, um, not intentional,’ I said in a smaller voice. ‘Um, but you were a terrific troupe leader.’
‘Was I?’
I blinked.
‘I called them to the dance,’ Silvessen continued. ‘At first.’
‘You… at first? What were they supposed to do after?’
Her silence was eloquent in ways that sent a shiver down my spine.
‘Yeah,’ said Zareen. ‘People don’t usually haul corpses out of the grave for a dance party, Ves.’
‘Got it. But then… why did they…?’
Jay leaned closer to me, and spoke in a low voice. ‘Notice how they copied our every move?’
‘Yes.’
‘And they stopped as soon as we did?’
‘Yes…’
‘Think about it a moment.’
My stomach dropped through the floor.
What had I been doing, besides dancing?
I’d been guiding my team’s moves, that’s what. Using my Merlin superpowers to shape us into an elite, perfectly synchronised dance troupe.
‘The radius of effect might have been slightly larger than I intended,’ I muttered.
Jay patted my shoulder. ‘To be fair, this day could have turned out worse.’
Emellana agreed. ‘If you’re going to absently wrest control of an undead army from the hands of an enraged murder victim, there are worse things you could do with it.’
‘And hey, we’re in one piece,’ Zareen said. ‘No thanks to Silvessen.’
My face was so hot I was surprised I didn’t burst into flame.
‘Let’s move on,’ I said hurriedly. I had some things to think quite hard about, but that would have to wait. I’d still promised a favour to a long-dead Yllanfalen nursing an ocean of grudges, and the regulator was still out there somewhere, doing its thing. Unmonitored.
I lifted my voice. ‘Your boon?’ I called. ‘What would you have?’
Instead of an answer, she returned with a question. ‘What is it that you’ve done?’
She wasn’t talking about the skeletons, I guessed. ‘We installed a magickal device. It’s new and we’re testing it, but its intended effect is to reverse the process of magickal decay — or reduce the effects of magickal overflow, as appropriate — and, um, restore balance.’
The silence was longer this time.
‘Did you feel a change?’ Jay asked. ‘An hour ago. The earth quaked, and then…’
A fair question. I didn’t notice much difference, yet, but we had arrived in Silvessen approximately five minutes ago. Silvessen herself had been born and died here; the town bore her name. She had lingered down the ages through centuries of silence and decay, because… well, because she was angry.
Perhaps also because she’d loved the place.
If it changed, she would know.
‘Will it work?’ came her echoing voice, softer now, with a note of… hope?
‘We don’t know, Jay said, honest to a fault as always. ‘But if it doesn’t, we’ll work on it until it does.’
‘Then that is the boon I would ask,’ said Silvessen ringingly. ‘Make my town whole again.’
‘You mean… magicakally?’ I asked.
‘In every way.’
Rebalance, repair, repopulate. Tall order.
I exchanged an uneasy glance with Jay, who shrugged. Right. Fair was fair — what choice did we have?
Especially since I’d managed to lose my own dance battle by way of the most spectacular own goal in world history.
‘Could be good,’ I ventured. ‘Could be interesting.’
‘Better hope Milady agrees,’ said Zareen darkly.
Emellana was shaking with laughter. ‘I think I can promise aid from the Troll Court,’ she said, when she’d regained control of herself. ‘Their Majesties will enjoy this story.’
‘And we have Yllanfalen connections aplenty,’ Jay put in.
‘Right,’ I nodded, ignoring Emellana’s remarks with superb grace. ‘You. Indira. My mum.’
‘I think the Society will want to do it.’ Jay smiled at me. ‘I mean, what does the Society do?’
‘Find things that are lost,’ I replied. ‘Mend things that are broken. Rescue things that need help.’
‘Exactly. This project is just a little bigger than usual.’
I took a breath, feeling better. ‘We have a deal,’ I called. ‘But it’ll take time; we can’t do it in a week. And we’ll need to bring a lot more people down here.’
No reply came, at least not in words. But a breeze wafted past, no longer the bone-chilling cold we’d suffered since we stepped into Silvessen Dell. This was a warm, soft wind, sweet and welcoming. A good sign.
And, to my immense relief, the legions of eerily silent skeletons turned around and walked slowly away. Back, presumably, to their opened graves, there to tuck themselves back in and return to slumber.
‘Okay,’ I sighed, stretching my aching limbs. ‘Indira. What do we still need to do before we can get out of here?’
‘I need to make sure the regulator’s stable,’ she answered. ‘Orlando said to monitor it for at least a few hours.’
‘If I’m expected to go another few hours without food, I will be committing multiple murder,’ Zareen informed us. ‘And there aren’t very many other people here, just saying.’
‘Got it,’ I said. ‘I undertake to preserve my life and that of my friends by way of pancakes, post haste.’
‘Sandwiches would be better, but I’ll take pancakes if that’s what you’ve got.’
She proceeded to stare at me expectantly, as though I might be disposed to magick up a couple of sandwiches on the spot.
Which I couldn’t, of course.
Could I?
Following my mishaps in the Fifth Britain and subsequent Merlinhood, more things were possible in Heaven and Earth than I’d previously imagined.
Maybe I could magick up sandwiches on demand.
I tried this.
‘Your face has gone funny,’ Zareen said, after a while. ‘Are you… doing something?’
‘I’m making sandwiches.’
Zareen’s brows rose. ‘To make a sandwich, you take bread, tuna fish, mayonnaise and sweetcorn, and combine them to delicious effect. What you’re doing is… no, I have no idea.’
‘I’m discovering myself to be significantly less amazing than I was hoping,’ I said.
‘Impossible,’ said Jay.
I smiled gratefully at him. ‘I’m glad you feel that way, because if I can’t spirit up some food on the spot then we’re going to have to go out for some.’
Jay bowed. ‘At your service, my lady. Lead on.’
‘I’m guessing you’re hungry, too.’
‘Absolutely famished.’
***
So Indira departed for the centre of main street again, there to stand watch over the regulator. She was accompanied by Emellana, and Zareen (‘Silvessen might have backed off,’ Zar explained, ‘but her friends are still floating around somewhere.’)
Jay escorted our local Captain of Food (yours truly) to the border of the Dell, and I took us back out into the world. The real world, the one that still had life and people in it.
It felt odd, like I’d been sitting in a blank silence for hours and was suddenly thrust back into vivid life again. Jay whisked us back to Bakewell, wherein we encountered movement and colour and the sounds of blissfully ordinary daily life. In other words, people.
I wondered how Silvessen felt after centuries of nothing and decay, with only a few, equally ghostly compatriots for company.
Then I pictured how she might feel if we could turn her town back into something like Bakewell. A community again. A centre for trade and industry. A home.
A worthy mission, I decided.
‘Tuna mayo for Zareen,’ I said, having exited a busy bakery, laden with carrier bags. ‘Cheese and tomato for you and Indira. Egg and cress, chicken salad, and sausage rolls for Em and me and anybody else who wants one.’
‘A fine haul,’ Jay agreed, eyeing the bags hungrily.
‘Plus, custard tarts, Danishes, chocolate eclairs, Bakewell puddings and a couple of flapjacks.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Tea. Buckets of it.’ I handed Jay a tray of drinks containers, gently steaming, which he took with the air of a man receiving a valuable and precious charge. If you want someone who’ll guard the tea with his actual life and never, ever spill so much as a drop of it, ask Jay.
Nor did he, even during the return trip back through the Winds of the Ways. We arrived in Silvessen with cups intact, bags only mildly savaged (sorry, I couldn’t help it), and plenty of good things for all.
Which was why it was a bit disconcerting to find nobody waiting for us.
‘Indira!’ Jay called, turning in circles (still without spilling the tea). ‘Emellana!’
No one answered.
I trotted to the middle of the main street, where Indira had set down the regulator. When I laid my palm against the damp earth, I felt a pulse of magick and a faint warmth: the device was still down there and still operative.
So where were my team?
‘Zareen!’ I yelled, straightening again. ‘Come on, you’re missing the tuna mayo.’
‘Here I am!’ Zareen trilled. And then she came walking around the side of the same tumble-down cottage in which I’d discovered the first skeleton.
Something was wrong with her voice, I noticed in passing; she sounded sing-song and shrill, which was not at all like her.
Something was wrong with her walk, too. She moved stiffly and jerkily, like a clumsily operated marionette. She grinned at us, but it wasn’t a smile; this was a horrifying grimace, a face-stretching pantomime of warmth and mirth that chilled me to the bottom of my soul.
If I had to guess, I’d say Zareen had gone and got herself possessed.
And if Zar, of all people, had ended up possessed, there wasn’t much hope that Indira or Emellana could have avoided a similar fate.
We had three angry glaistigs still on the loose somewhere — and we’d left our three friends behind without us while we’d gone in search of custard tarts.
‘It’s official,’ I sighed. ‘No mission in the history of time has ever been this much of a disaster.’
