Modern Magick

The Heart of Hyndorin: 5

'You know he's going to mess us up first chance he gets?' said Jay, eyeing Wyr sourly. The subject of his justifiable resentment was still in Emellana's custody, engaged in some loud debate I had not bothered to listen to. But as I watched, Emellana released him — none too gently — and his gaze fastened instantly on Jay and I, obviously holding secret counsels without him.

'I know,' I murmured. 'I'm counting on it.'

'Wha—' said Jay.

Slightly louder, I said: 'I know, Jay, and you're right to be concerned. Just don't tell him about the Wand and the ring, all right? It's best if he doesn't know what was in that scroll-case.'

Jay, to his credit, only blinked once at me in confusion before his face cleared to impassiveness, and he nodded. His eyes shifted sideways to Wyr in a creditable display of craftiness.

Wyr gave no sign of having heard me. 'Ready to go?' he said, and I noticed he gave Baron Alban a wide berth as he passed.

'Quickly, please.'

Miranda, to my surprise, spoke up. 'One question, first. Whereabouts did you leave your new employers, Wyr?'

'Lady Fenella? Truth be told, I haven't seen her in a while.'

I thought I saw relief on Miranda's face, before she turned away. No wonder. She'd defected to Fenella Beaumont's miserable organisation, only to (hopefully) defect back; she wasn't going to be popular with anybody, at this rate.

Course, one could rely on nothing Wyr said. Me, I counted on running into a few of our least favourite foes the moment we got anywhere near Torvaston's Enclave.

Couldn't be helped.

'Tokens?' said Wyr.

I'd noticed Alban stuffing handfuls of the things into his pockets soon after he had appeared, but those would doubtless be to whichever henges he'd yet to go in search of us. Not much use. 'We will be travelling with Patel Windways,' I said.

Wyr looked nonplussed.

'That guy,' I clarified, pointing at Jay.

'You know that's—'

'Illegal,' I said, interrupting him. 'We know.'

'You'll be thieving in no time.'

I opened my mouth to object to this monstrously unfair charge, but had to close it again in silence. Not only had I given the sneak permission to plunder Torvaston's Enclave at his leisure, I also proposed to divest the place of its most important and valuable artefact myself. We could argue semantics and historical-rights-of-ownership all day, and it would still all boil down to something uncomfortably close to theft.

Noticing he had successfully got under my skin, Wyr grinned at me. 'Well, ladies and gents, we're heading north,' he said. 'Far north.'

I wasted a moment in useless doubts. He was a back-stabbing little shit. Would even the promise of uncontested plunder of a lost king's personal effects be enough to keep him in line? Was he taking us to the Hyndorin Mountains, or was he once again sweeping us away to somewhere else?

I shook the thoughts away. It was a gamble worth taking. The worst he could do was delay us (again); meanwhile, it could take us days or weeks to work out where to go without help.

'Lead on,' I said. 'We're right behind you.'

That he had indeed taken us far north seemed indubitable, a half-hour or so later. We exited the last of a sequence of henge-complexes, each decreasing in size, upon a windy peak somewhere bone-chillingly cold. Also distressingly short on oxygen.