Chapter fifty-one

Klethropolis

 

Once the party was through the gates Viola turned and closed the doors again, with a flourish of her hands. She invited no questioning about her abilities. The only one who might have been minded to ask her anything was Dom, who had not seen this sort of thing before, but he was too tactful and cautious to ask any questions just yet.

There was a brief and tense conversation between Viola and Hardacre. Viola wanted to go and look straightaway for the naga, while Hardacre wanted to find somewhere to lay low and track their approaching enemies. Hardacre argued that they needed to get away from the gate, re-group and develop a search plan and Viola reluctantly agreed.

They threaded their way through the labyrinthine greenery to find somewhere to hide. They left Potentilla to guard the doors, with strict instructions to raise the alarm, as quietly as she was able, if she heard anything outside the doors.  For some reason Hardacre had also asked her for her pack.

Most of the built structures seemed to be low silo-like cylinders with no doors. However, interspersed among them were taller, more conventional buildings, with similar-looking doors to the main gates.

They chose a building as far from the gates as they dared venture. It was a little square two-storey construction, with a sloping red slate roof.  They looked up at it suspiciously. It could be any small house in the elven world, save for its bare bricks with no stucco, but it had remained completely intact while nature had moved in decisively around it.   

 ‘Let me have a quick look’ Kath insisted. She glared at Viola, ‘maybe this time you’ll let me check that it’s safe before we blunder in’

Viola muttered, ‘well, that’s fine, but hurry up’, then she stared back at where Potentilla was waiting, even though she now had no line of sight. 

Kath pulled her tool box out of her bag.  She had been lugging the sturdy walnut box around for weeks now and this was a very unfortunate time to finally have a use for it. She took out a small silver hammer. The others had seen this device several times before but Dom had not.

‘What’s that?’ he asked

It had been a long time since anyone had shown an interest in the details of her work and so, despite the circumstances, she was happy to explain.

‘It’s a paraphonic sphurion’

Dom struggled to translate this.

‘Mallet of music?’

Kath smiled – ‘harmonic hammer – but essentially the same thing…’

Dom had many more questions that he would have liked to ask, but time was short. Kath was already up and approaching a side wall of the building.  

She took the hammer and tapped it against the wall. There was a dull ‘ping’, like a spoon struck against a cheap wine glass. Kath put her ear to the wall and waited. After about three seconds she moved away and smiled. She repeated this process three times at different parts of that stretch of the wall, and then she was satisfied. 

What she could hear was similar to the music that they had found in the Great Wall but more diffuse.  There was no long melody, just fragments of notes and chords. It was pleasing but it carried no emotional charge. It was clear what its function was though – to preserve the fabric of the structures from all the vagaries of time. She could sense no other enchantments. There was nothing to fear.

She turned to Akenopteryx.

‘Did the architects cast these spells – the dwimmers that preserve these buildings?

The other two parrots flew to their leader and they had a brief whispered conversation. Their conclusion was very clear.

‘No – they had only limited mage skills’

‘So’ asked Kath, ‘who enchanted these buildings?’    

‘Their leader did – a very dark elf, who we call Ophia.  She was the paramount architect – some say that she had the powers of a god’

Kath smiled grimly and sighed.

‘Well, that’s not the biggest surprise of my life…’

She returned to the wall to listen a little while longer. The music sounded even stranger – it was like all the elements of a beautiful song were there but no-one had bothered to put them in the right order. She turned back to her friends.   

‘You can hear that, Vee, can’t you?’

Viola tilted her head – Kath took that to be a reluctant ‘yes’.

‘It’s different though’ Viola said, ‘it’s not quite like the music that we’ve heard before’

 ‘Yes - it’s the sound of old magecraft, very strong but less focused; less developed, perhaps. I’m sure a half-way decent witch could blow these enchantments away.’

They looked at each other. They were well aware how much better a witch Bea was than half-way decent.  Viola was the first to break free of their enveloping fear.

‘The music - it’s like Dwarven magic but…’

‘…without the Dwarven engineering or the power…’ Kath stopped for a second, ‘… or the poignancy’

‘Why would magic be stronger when it is more beautiful?’

Kath shrugged; they were wasting too much time. She could see Hardacre’s quiet impatience growing. 

‘You can open the door now’ she said, ‘I’m pretty sure that it’s safe’

Viola stepped forward and repeated the hand gestures that she had made at the front gates.  The door slid open.

‘Not exactly high security’ whispered Dom. 

They went inside.  They stepped into a large open-plan room with wooden benches and a series of short, wide, hollowed out tree trunks. In each of them was stack of papers done up with binding string. Once again it looked as though it had been used yesterday, except that everything was tided away, as if everyone had gone off for a long holiday. There was no dust, no cobwebs and no sign of any decay. Upstairs was exactly like downstairs.

‘It may be weakish magic’ said Kath, ‘but it’s on a grand scale’

Hardacre plonked Potentilla’s bag and his own down on to the tiled floor. He had scarcely noticed the contents of the room.

‘Empty your packs’ he ordered, ‘quickly, please. I’ve had a worrying thought’

They all looked blank. Hardacre turned to Viola for help.

‘I can promise you that this is important and urgent, madam’

Viola lifted her pack upside down and emptied the contents out on to the floor.  The others followed her lead. Soon the floor was strewn with clothes, rations and cooking utensils. Hardacre got down on his knees and began to work through the contents of Potentilla’s pack.

‘What are you looking for?’ asked Dom

Hardacre looked up very briefly.

‘A teleport beacon’

Dom and Kath scrambled for their stuff. Their hands were a desperate whir.  Viola held her palms out, bemused and disquieted.

‘What…is…going…on?’

Kath gabbled as she replied.

‘It’s a tiny object with a magic trace on it. It has a pulse spell cast on it…’

Hardacre looked up. He voice was even.

‘If they slipped it in a bag when they captured you then they could blink here any moment. So – if it’s here we need to find it rapidly’

Kath looked up at Viola. Her tone was, if anything, now even more insistent.

‘Look for a pebble or a coin. Anything small that you don’t recognise’ 

A pile of unruly possessions began to fill the room.  For a while they could find nothing and they began to relax, thinking that Hardacre had been mistaken, but then Viola felt something sewn neatly into the lining of her bag. The rest of them stood back while Hardacre unpicked the stiches with some scissors from his sewing kit. He pulled out a grey stone, the size of a sling shot.  He lifted it up and summoned up the counter-spell to turn off the beacon.

‘Wait!’ hissed Dom

Hardacre waited with the stone at eye level. His tone was exquisitely even, but his hands were not entirely steady.

‘Why, exactly?’   

‘Because if you turn it off, they’ll know that we’ve found it. If we don’t turn it off then we can control where they teleport to’

Viola nodded cautiously

‘That sounds like a rather clever idea…’

‘In theory, yes – quite ingenious’ Hardacre agreed, raising an eyebrow a fraction, ‘but how will we actually proceed with such a plan?’

‘We could dig a big pit and bury it in it?’ suggested Dom, eagerly.

Kath shook her head. She was pale and tense.

‘Wouldn’t work – the ‘look ahead mechanism’ would stop anyone from blinking in to it. They’d soon work out what we’ve done. Laurence should turn it off, immediately’

‘We could throw it over the edge of a cliff…’

‘A good plan, again,’ murmured Hardacre, ‘with one minor, but nonetheless serious, flaw – we’re five hundred miles from the nearest cliff’

Dom was not yet discouraged.

‘A river, a tar pit, a snare…?’

‘Possibly’ said Hardacre, ‘but again, I doubt the availability of those locales or contraptions…’

Viola made a face.

‘We don’t have that much time’ she said, ‘can you magical-types make up your minds please’

Dom’s voice had dropped to a whisper.

‘There must be something that we can do with it’

‘I don’t think so, ’ said Hardacre, slightly sadly, ‘I think we should turn it off’

‘Are you sure that that will work?’ asked Dom

‘Because of possible confabulation layers? Is that what you mean?’

Dom’s eyes were bright with the eagerness of the enthusiastic student.

‘What’s that? Is that some sort of misdirection spell?’

‘Well, that’s magecraft more than witchcraft, so this is perhaps a problem for your kind of magic-user. A penetrating  diagnostikos would tell us, I’m sure ’

Kath jumped up and put her palms to the side of her head.

‘Do something, please! I can’t stand having it here. They could use it at any time! They could be here in exactly one second’s time. Doesn’t that concentrate anyone’s mind?’

Viola sighed. She leant over and took the pebble out of Hardacre’s hand. She turned to Dom.

‘Take this and throw it over the wall, then we can forget about it’

Dom stood up, clearly disappointed at being torn away from the seminar.  Viola handed him the pebble.

‘And after you’ve done that check up on the lieutenant. You can knock when you need to get back in’

Dom nodded and began to hurry away.

‘And no kissing’ commanded Viola, three-quarters-seriously.

 

They repacked their equipment. Kath did hers very slowly and methodically. Every now and then she mopped her brow with a handkerchief.  Viola was talking with Hardacre about Dom. She was mildly irritated.   

‘Please don’t encourage him, Laurence’ 

Hardacre nodded, accepting the criticism as just.

‘He doesn’t need any encouragement, though, I’d say – he’s an apprentice mage and from what I’ve seen he’ll make a very fine one. It’s all about attention to detail. And he seems very patient’

‘He is that, I’m certain…’ muttered Viola

Hardacre tilted his head questioningly.

‘What did you say, major?’

Viola sensed his quick mind calculating. She felt a brief, but sharp, pang of guilt. She’d promised Dom and she didn’t intend to betray him.

‘Say? Nothing  – I was just agreeing with you’

He accepted this without further enquiry.

Kath was standing over one of the wooden bowls staring at the papers with eager eyes.

‘Shall we have a look at these?’

Viola and Hardacre looked up at each other. They shared an almost imperceptible tic of agreement.  Kath was finding their mutual empathy rather unnerving.

‘A very brief look, yes, but then we must start searching’ said Viola.

Kath took out a pile of the bundled papers and dropped them gently on the floor.  Hardacre and she sifted through the first bundle, while Viola peered out of the window, waiting for Dom to return.