Modern Magick

The Heart of Hyndorin: 7

I obeyed, Alban falling in beside me. We paced from one side of the plateau to the other, eyes fixed upon the jewelled clock-face.

Almost imperceptibly, one of the three silver hands moved.

'I think,' said Emellana, 'that maybe it is not a watch, but more some kind of a... compass.'

'With three hands?' said Alban.

'Whatever it is attracted to is perhaps complicated.'

'Doubtless,' I said, excitement rising. 'Em, you might have cracked it!'

Emellana returned to the stone-slab of a lift, and stepped onto it. 'Let's go for a walk,' she said.

Ten minutes later, we made another discovery.

Following Em's lead, we wandered through the sunlit valley, watching breathlessly as one or another of the three hands slowly moved around the compass's face. It wasn't just the hands that were affected by movement, either; while it was difficult to detect in the bright light of the morning, the jewels around the rim brightened and dimmed with a faint magickal glow. They were collected broadly into three colours, too: blue and gems formed a row of three, followed by shades of green, and finally three purplish jewels. They tended to react in concert.

'Pick a colour,' I said after several minutes of tramping aimlessly about. 'Look. When the shortest hand moves, the blue ones shine. The green ones seem to respond to the middle hand, and the purple ones to the longest.'

'Purple,' said Em, and adjusted her direction. Instead of walking in circles, we walked until the longest of the three silver hands edged around the face, and kept to that direction. The compass led us back into the orchard of tangled trees, some distance from the mountain — which had, a glance back revealed, faded once again into the white mist.

Nothing emerged from the trees, nothing met my eyes that might explain why the compass had brought us tramping in this direction, and we were only getting farther from the door. My excitement began to ebb. What if neither the compass nor the box had anything to do with opening the way? Were we wasting time?

Emellana stopped, in between two withered old orchard trees. In the shadow cast by their arching boughs, the soft glow of the purple jewels appeared stronger.

Or maybe they shone brighter because we were onto something. The long hand had stopped in the dead centre of those three purplish gems, and as we watched, the glow grew brighter and deeper.

'Em,' I said in awe. 'You're purple.'

She glanced down at her amethyst-coloured shirt. 'I know.'

'No. I mean... you're glowing.' A swirl of something misty billowed up around Emellana, shimmering and purple, and soared into the sky.

I watched in silence as a trio of butterflies drifted into the whirl of light and hovered there, softly aglow.

'What happens if you step out?' said Jay.

Emellana took three big steps away, and the mist and lights promptly died away.

Alban took the compass from her. 'And back?' he said.

When Emellana returned to her former spot, the glow returned. What's more, it was definitely coming from her. Even her skin glimmered with that weird purple light.

'It seems I am stuck here,' she said, ruefully.

'We'll find the other two,' I said. 'And giddy gods, I hope this doesn't only work for trolls, or we're a team member short.'

Alban eyed the compass in his hands, and gave a tiny sigh. 'I perceive it is my fate to become a magickal beacon.'

'Only for a little while,' I promised, hoping I spoke the truth. 'Pick a colour.'

'Blue.'

'Be quick,' Em said. 'It is my belief that these points move around.'

'Why would they—' I began, and shut up. 'Of course. Why would there need to be a compass, if the beacon-points were fixed?'

'Precisely.'

We left Emellana standing in her whorl of magick, and followed the compass once more, moving rather faster than before. Blue turned out to live a few hundred feet away, in an open spot in the meadow. Alban lit up like a sapphire-coloured firework — not quite so explosively, thank goodness — and stood there, arms folded, as butterflies settled in his hair. 'Okay. And who's taking green?'

'It will have to be you or me,' Jay said to Miranda. 'Whatever's going on with Ves I don't know, but she seems to be the best person to head inside first.'

Was that a compliment, or was I being fed to the wolves? 'It could be dangerous,' I said to Jay, glowering.

'And you've just turned a person into a tree.'

'... good point.'

'You'll have one of us with you, too.'

I pick you, I thought, but did not say aloud.

Miranda, though, is not stupid. 'Fine,' she sighed, and held out her hand for the compass.

Alban gave it over. 'It tickles,' he informed her gravely.

'The light?'

Alban nodded once.

'Lucky that I'm not ticklish,' she said, marching off. 'Oh no wait, I am.'

I looked back once, in the direction we'd left Emellana. I could still see her flurry of purple mist and light, flowing into the skies. By now it was thick with butterflies and, doubtless, other wingy things.

I disliked having to leave three-fifths of my team behind in keeping the things activated, but if it had to be that way, then so be it.

I hoped, at least, that it would successfully open the door.

'Right,' said Miranda shortly afterwards, installed atop the half-rotten stump of a fallen tree, and lit up with verdant green. 'Please get on with it, before I drown in insects.'

A quick glance, to check. There was Em's beacon, still aglow, and Alban's column of blue. Miranda's gathered quickly in radiance, until it hurt to look at her.

'We'll be—' I said.

'Ves.' Jay hit my arm, and pointed.

'What— giddy gods.' The mountain was back. We were nowhere near it, but whatever enchantment had hidden it from a distance was visibly evaporating into nothing. The mountain loomed over the valley, glittering with snow and magick and — gods, the griffins. They were whirling up there, hundreds of them, and a whirl of coloured light — familiar colours, these, purple and green and blue — engulfed the whole lot.

I could just see the gigantic door as it... vanished. Indeed, half the rock-face disappeared.

'It's not a mountain,' I breathed. 'It's a tower.'