by Faerie being what it is, the Vault of Promise couldn’t be in some mere ordinary location. There’s no Central Bank of Goodies in the lands of the Yllanfalen, with lock boxes and safes; there isn’t even a secret room somewhere, complete with armed guards and unpronounceable passwords.
No, the Yllanfalen have an island in the middle of a lake. The island in question is called Lyllora Var, it’s literally about fifty feet across, and it’s made out of white rock laced with starry quartz. On this island is a bubble of light, and in that bubble of light is — or was — the moonsilver lyre.
So far, so lovely.
The catch with Lyllora Var? It isn’t there.
Neither is the lake.
Because this is Faerie, so there’s a magic fountain that usually isn’t there either. When it is, it’s under the old king’s palace. When it feels disposed, it is so obliging as to pour forth the waters of this wondrous lake, and when the lake’s restored then the island appears.
By the time we had got the entire story pieced together, I was no longer surprised that the Yllanfalen seemed so happy to share details of this super-secret vault. I mean, why not? It’s not like we were ever going to reach it.
‘Are we at all inclined to reconsider the idea that someone swiped the lyre from this vault?’ I said, as we turned away from our latest interrogee. The woman in question had outright sneered at us. Sneered! I judged we were not the only hopeful treasure-hunters to show up with searching questions about this lyre. She, too, had trotted out the same line about the lyre’s being missing.
‘No,’ said Jay. ‘They retrieve the thing every festival, remember? Or did, before it vanished. So it’s achievable.’
‘Wait,’ called the woman upon whom I had just resolutely turned my back.
I turned around.
Her gaze, though, was not fixed upon me. She was looking at Addie, who had wandered off for a large part of the afternoon, and had now wandered back. ‘That unicorn,’ she said. ‘Where did you…?’
Having grown tired of the sneering lady already, I merely waved my pipes by way of response.
‘Let me see those,’ she snapped.
‘No—’ I began.
‘Ves,’ Jay said, apparently having anticipated this response. ‘She may have something useful to tell us.’
I handed them over with great reluctance, and stood vigilant, in case she should make a break for the hills with my pipes in hand.
She did not, however. She inspected them most closely, her young face intent, and ran her fingers several times over the silver. Then she put them to her lips, and played a ditty of a tune I’d never heard before.
My lovely Adeline paused in the act of nibbling grass by the roadside, and lifted her head. She stared at the woman who’d moved in on my perfect pipes, and the woman, damn her, stared back.
If I was expecting some explanation as to what that was all about, I was out of luck. The woman merely handed my pipes back to me, her face unreadable, and said: ‘Why are you interested in the moonsilver lyre?’
‘We’re from the Society for the Preservation of Magickal Heritage,’ I rattled off, feeling obscurely annoyed. ‘It’s our job to research ancient artefacts.’
‘Research?’ she said. ‘Why this one?’
‘It’s also our job to rescue ancient artefacts,’ said Jay.
‘So you came to “rescue” the lyre,’ she said, her mouth curving satirically. ‘Did you know it was missing before you arrived?’
‘It’s my fault,’ said Mother. ‘I brought them here. I’ve seen the lyre before, you see, and I wanted to see it again.’
‘Why?’
‘Research.’
The woman looked from me to Jay to Mother, exasperated. ‘Do you even have any idea what you are trying to accomplish?’
‘Nope,’ I muttered.
Jay elbowed me. ‘Look, we’d like to get the lyre back for you,’ he said. ‘It’s our job. We’re hoping to begin at the vault, find out what happened there.’
He received a strange look in response. ‘What if it does not wish to return?’
‘Wish?’ faltered Jay. ‘It has wishes?’
‘It has… a destiny,’ she said, spectacularly unhelpful. ‘The same as you or I.’
‘Was its destiny to be purloined by a thief?’
‘Is that what happened?’ Her head tilted.
‘I don’t know,’ said Jay flatly. ‘Is it?’
The woman looked dreamily up at the sky, probably preparing another fatuously mystical statement for our benefit.
‘For goodness’ sake,’ I said. ‘By my unicorn’s silky nose hairs, will you help us or not?’
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘For the sake of Ylariane, and those pipes.’
‘Who or what is Ylariane?’
Adeline whickered, and bumped my elbow with her nose.
‘…Oh.’
The woman’s sardonic smile was back. ‘I will need your sworn word,’ she said, gravely. ‘If you find the lyre, you will return it to the Yllanfalen.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘The Society always repatriates artefacts, wherever possible.’
‘Very good. You will be held to that.’ There was a shiver of something in her voice as she spoke, something rather dark. It occurred to me that, however obliging the Yllanfalen appeared to be about answering our questions (for the most part), they would not be easy to fool, or to betray.
Fortunately, we had no plans to do either. Did we? I eyed my mother with momentary misgivings, for she was wearing an expression of mild congeniality which seemed at odds with her character.
I’d have to keep a close eye on her.
We had interrupted the Yllanfalen woman in the middle of shopping, I’d judged from the quantity of small parcels tucked into a willow basket she carried. She now lifted the basket as though placing it onto a shelf — whereupon it disappeared. Then she turned to us with a nod, dusted off her hands, and said: ‘We’ll be needing a few of Ylariane’s friends, I imagine?’
‘You are going with us?’ said Mother.
‘Did you want a guide to the lake, or not?’ answered the woman with faint irritation.
Mother held up her hands. ‘Actually, we do.’
‘Then first we must return to the palace. The unicorns?’
I hurried to obey, whistling Addie’s bouquet of tunes upon my pipes. She stamped one silvery hoof, and spat out grass. ‘How did you do that?’ I blurted, when I’d finished.
Our guide’s head tilted again. ‘What?’
‘The way you stored your basket! I’ve never seen it done.’
‘It is an old trick, among the Yllanfalen.’
‘So how do you do it?’
She gave another of her faint smiles. ‘If you find and return the lyre, I will give you the spell. Is that fair?’
Privately, I wasn’t sure such a spell (however handy) was quite a fair trade for an ancient lyre of unimaginable power and priceless value, but since we weren’t here to steal the thing anyway, it seemed a solid prize. I agreed.
‘What’s your name?’ I said after, with a smile. I might have been regretting my earlier irritation with her. After all, she was Faerie. A certain ethereal mysticism was natural to her, in the same way that drinking, vulgarity and a love of sports are natural to humankind. I shouldn’t really hold her fey qualities against her.
‘I am called Ayllindariorana,’ she said.
‘That’s… not going to happen.’
She glanced at me, and as the friends of Adeline/Ylariane came galloping up the street to aid us, I detected a gleam of mischief in her sea-blue eyes. ‘You can call me Ayllin.’
‘Better.’
And so, back to King Evelaern’s Halls. We galloped through a shroud of hazy, ethereal mist clinging to its pale, perfect walls, and its slender spires twinkled with magick under the afternoon sun.
Odd of the Yllanfalen, I thought. All this astonishing beauty and glory, and they treated it as a party pad.
I’d seen no sign of an entrance as we rode up to the imposing palace, but Ayllin led us away from the splendid frontage and around the side. There, hidden between two slim pilasters, was a tall, narrow door.
Or, it would have been were it not filled in with white bricks.
Ayllin retrieved a set of syrinx pipes of her own, a pair that looked wrought from quartz. Her song echoed upon the air, a mere handful of notes that rang out clear and sharp. As the sounds died away, the slender arch shimmered and became a door of white oak wood.
‘Thank you,’ said Ayllin gravely, and the door swung slowly open.
In we went.
‘Who were you thanking?’ I asked as we filed into a spacious antechamber, cool and dim, its walls all twined about with pale-leaved vines.
‘The sprites,’ she said. ‘They do not often show themselves.’
‘They’re the keepers of the doors?’
‘Among other things.’
I remembered the woman in the music shop. She’d sold me a garden song, on the grounds that the sprites liked it. I tucked these bits of information away. If sprites grew gardens and kept doors for the Yllanfalen, what else might they do? What might they know?
I also did my best to commit Ayllin’s door-opening sprite-song to memory.
Ayllin paused in the midst of the chamber, and smiled at the parade of unicorns that had followed us inside. ‘You do not wish to trail after us all the way to the lake,’ she told them. ‘There are stairs.’
The night-black stallion, for whom I knew no name, stamped one hoof, and shook his great head.
‘There is grass outside,’ I offered, without much hope. Addie’s greedy heart beat only for chips. Her friends probably had unusual tastes, too.
Still, Mr. Midnight turned and ambled away again, followed by a goldish-coloured mare and a creature the colour of raspberry meringue. Addie stood her ground.
I hugged her around her velvety-soft neck. ‘Love you for your loyalty, but you should go too. Enjoy the sun. Chips coming later.’
Addie shook out her mane, lipped at my sleeve, and finally went away. Did I imagine that flick of the tail in Ayllin’s direction as she strutted past? Was it really as dismissive as it looked?
It occurred to me that my faithful friend did not quite trust Ayllin, and I wondered why.
The lady in question had not waited to witness the departure of the unicorns. She was already halfway across the room, walking purposefully, my mother in hot pursuit. There was a similarity in their no-nonsense stride, I noticed with interest.
Jay beckoned. ‘Come on. She’ll be fine.’
‘Oh, I know. She’s made of concrete, diamonds and solid steel. Nothing can touch her.’
‘Sort of like you, then?’
I blinked. ‘No. Well, maybe the diamonds part. I wouldn’t mind that.’
‘They do sparkle,’ Jay agreed.
‘Gloriously.’ We followed Ayllin and Mother to the far side of the room, down a spacious passage beyond, and then Ayllin started down a wide staircase of polished, if dusty, wood.
Only then did I recall a detail that had glided past me before.
The lake was under the palace, and we were rapidly descending underground.
‘I feel you should know,’ I called, hastening to catch up. ‘There are—’
‘Lindworms,’ growled my mother. ‘I’m telling you.’
‘They won’t come this far,’ said Ayllin airily, her pace not slowing one whit.
A feral roar shook the stonework, attended by a great, deep rumbling in the walls and floor.
‘I—’ began Ayllin, and faltered. ‘How did it get so—!’
She got no further, for an enormous lindworm burst into view, scales glittering darkly over its sleek wyrm hide, jaws agape. Ayllin gave a shriek — and disappeared in a cloud of dust, earth and lindworm.
