by In the end, we passed through five henge complexes. Jay, of course, went through each set twice in order to ferry the lot of us across. By the time Wyr stopped and said, ‘Well, here we are,’ Jay was reduced to a legless mess.
I gathered this from his recumbent posture upon the floor, limbs akimbo, his face bathed in sweat. He was breathing far too fast, and — to my mingled amusement and concern — laughing.
Wyr stood over him with his hands in the pockets of his long coat, and slowly shook his head. ‘So many reasons to use tokens like a normal person.’
‘I’m using the Ways like a normal person,’ said Jay, laughing, and then he began to cough.
‘Oops.’ I ran to help him sit up. ‘Jay, we’re going to take a little break right here. All right?’
‘I’m fine.’ He beamed sunnily up at me, and sagged in my arms like a sack of potatoes.
I let him slither back to the ground.
‘Well.’ I looked around. ‘Let’s use this time for a little reconnaissance, hm? Is this… Vale?’
I said it doubtfully, because to my admittedly inexperienced eye, there wasn’t much about the place to suggest that we had arrived anywhere significant. We had emerged at a small complex comprising only three henges, none of them large. The trio of stone circles sat atop a grassy hill in the midst of a rolling, airy plain. In one direction I could see, distantly, the edge of an evergreen forest; everywhere else was simply more grass. A desultory drizzle of rain fell from a grey sky.
‘Vale’s that way.’ Wyr pointed out at some of the grass.
‘It’s a ways off, by the looks of it,’ I said.
‘They gave up trying to put a henge complex in there,’ said Wyr. ‘Never worked.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s… well, you’ll see.’ Wyr set off down the hill, hands in his pockets, whistling a jaunty tune.
I made to follow him.
And stopped, because down there in the grass, over towards the forest, I saw a string of what looked like wild horses racing by. They weren’t, of course. Even from this distance, I could see the far-off glint of the graceful horn each bore upon their forehead.
Adeline had stopped, too, and stood staring in their direction, her head high.
‘Unicorns,’ I said.
Miranda breathed something unintelligible but no doubt awed, and started down the hill at once.
‘No, wait!’ I said, cursing myself for an idiot. ‘Mir, hang on a second. We shouldn’t just blindly follow Wyr. Em, will you take care of Jay and pup for a bit while I check things out?’ And keep an eye on Miranda, I wanted to add, but didn’t.
Emellana nodded. ‘I think it wise.’
Jay had stopped laughing or coughing. He lay silent, ostensibly dazed, though his eyes opened at my words and he looked intently at me. ‘I should go with you,’ he said.
‘Nope.’
‘But—’
‘If you can prove you can stand up straight for more than twenty seconds, then you can come with me.’
It took Jay about ten to demonstrate his total incapacity for vertical posture.
‘I’ll be back soon,’ I promised.
‘I’m coming with you,’ said Miranda.
‘What?’ I said, idiotically.
She did not deign to repeat what she’d said, but instead strode towards Adeline, one hand outstretched. Addie, the traitor, permitted herself to be petted, and when Miranda swung herself up onto her back, she made no objection.
I knew Addie could carry two passengers at once; she’d done it before. I was left, then, to fume impotently, having no reasonable grounds upon which to object to Miranda’s company.
Ah, screw reasonable. ‘The fact is, Mir, I don’t trust you,’ I said.
She thought about that. ‘I can understand why you wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘Nonetheless.’ She sat there atop Addie’s back, unmoved.
I folded my arms, equally unmoved.
‘I swear you will come to no harm at my hands?’ Miranda tried, and gave me a Brownie’s Honour salute with her right hand.
‘Why are you so determined to come along?’
‘Because,’ said Miranda, with exaggerated patience, ‘if Vale proves to be as awash with griffins as you imagine, you might need me. Isn’t that why Milady wanted me along?’
‘Not untrue,’ I conceded.
‘And because I left for Ancestria Magicka in the first place because they promised me significantly enhanced access to magickal beasts of all species, both extant and extinct, and to be honest this is the first real chance I’ve had at anything of the kind. I’m not sitting up here waiting while you have all the fun.’
‘Ancestria Magicka lie, what a shocker,’ I muttered, but I stopped arguing. ‘You’re sitting behind,’ I said, in a no-nonsense tone, and joined her atop Addie’s back. ‘Right. Em, we’ll come straight back as soon as we know it’s safe. If our creepy little thief comes back… truss him up or something.’
‘The thief is at the bottom of the hill,’ said Emellana.
‘Fine. He can stay there. Hup.’ I gave Addie the signal to fly, and she extended her beautiful wings as she took off at a trot, and then a canter. I urged her in the same approximate direction Wyr had been heading in, and soon we were airborne, a strong wind blowing drizzle into our faces.
I saw Wyr as we rose into the air, watching our upward progress with an expression of mild chagrin. Did he think we were running out on our deal? I hoped he wouldn’t give Jay a hard time over it, but if he did, Emellana could handle him.
We flew for perhaps five minutes, over uninterrupted grassy hills. Then, I caught a glimpse of a cluster of buildings upon the horizon, and my heart quickened with excitement. ‘There it is!’ I shouted, and pointed.
‘I see it,’ yelled Miranda in my ear.
The town quickly grew in our vision as we raced towards it, soon proving to be quite large. Surprisingly so. Why should I be surprised? Perhaps because Torvaston’s hand-drawn map on the back of his scroll-case hadn’t suggested anything of the kind. But, it was four hundred years old. The town of Vale spread out before us, composed of an expanse of mostly low-rise buildings. There seemed to be a trend for blue paint, for some reason, for the town was predominantly cerulean and periwinkle, with white ornaments. The grey-blue waters of a wide river snaked through the settlement, glinting in lacklustre fashion in the muted light, and a network of smaller waterways wound their way through the streets.
But our attention was soon distracted from this sight, however agreeable, for right in the middle of the town rose a hill so tall it could almost be classified as a mountain. We’d seen nothing of it from a distance, which argued for its enjoying some kind of magickal camouflage; only once we were almost on top of it did it abruptly loom out of the misty skies. Its sides were unusually smooth, and thickly clad in velvety greenery. It was liberally veined with gemstones, or so I judged from the periodic flashes of colour and reflected light that caught my eye as we flew nearer.
‘Look,’ said Miranda. ‘Look!’
Her arm stretched past my nose, pointing up and up. I looked.
And could almost have imagined myself back at Farringale, for whirling with majestic grace around the summit of that hill was a trio of griffins. They were high up, so high as to appear minuscule. But there was no mistaking the crackle of magickal lightning that wreathed their powerful wings.
I fumbled for the scroll-case, and pulled it open. There, in fading ink, was a shaky network of rivers generally matching those I saw before me, and a shape that could reasonably indicate the hill.
‘Rivers,’ I said. ‘Mountain. Griffins. Right.’ I put the case away again, and permitted myself one more long, greedy stare at those griffins far above. There were five by then — no, six — and they were coming down. ‘I think we’re in the right place,’ I said to Miranda.
‘Unicorn,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Look to your left, and down.’
She was right. Way down there, just taking to the skies, was a winged horse as ethereal and lovely as my Adeline. Well, almost. Addie is, after all, the best.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Let’s fetch the others.’
Unfortunately for us, we arrived back at the hilltop henges to find that the others were no longer there.
I stood in the centre of the three stone circles, turning about in the futile hope that I’d catch sight of Jay somewhere on the horizon. Or Emellana, eighteen feet tall and dressed in purple.
Nope.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ I muttered. ‘Not again.’
