Modern Magick

Alchemy and Argent: 19

It took us ten minutes to trudge our way through to a road, by the end of which time I had mud up to my knees and I couldn't feel my toes. 'Isn't it meant to be summer?' I groused, trying in vain to shake the cold, sludgy grime out of my sandals.

Jay made no answer. He glanced up and down the road, which was a beautiful construct of white stone. The tree-cover having thinned somewhat, it shone silver under the moon. 'I think this way,' he said, picking a direction at what looked to me like random.

Being Jay, though, he was perfectly right. Soon enough, the walls of a town appeared on the horizon, with clustered houses behind it. Built from the same white stone as the road, the town looked a creation of pure magick, like it had coalesced out of moonlight itself, and would vanish with the rising of the sun.

Hell, this was fairyland. For all I knew, that's exactly what it was.

'Hoping that's Everynden,' I said.

'The maps showed no other towns in the vicinity of that henge,' said Jay. 'Though being two hundred years out of date, who knows.'

'And the mines are where in relation to the town?'

'Somewhere around here,' said Jay, and fell over.

I ran to his side. 'Jay! Curse it, we should have something sensible out here, like lights.'

No answer. I searched the darkened ground for his prone form, and found nothing but empty air.

'Jay?'

He hadn't fallen over. He had disappeared.

'Jay!' I yelled. 'This is a bad habit of yours!'

'Sorry,' he said from behind me, and I leapt a foot or so in the air.

'And to think I used to like the night-time,' I said plaintively. 'Where did you go?'

All I could see of him was a tall, shadowed figure with threads of moonlight in his hair — and a glowing nugget of argent in the hand he held up. 'Remember Torvaston's tower?'

'It was only the other week.'

'And how the snuffbox worked?'

'Like a passport to his majesty's bedchamber.'

'I don't know if that's a passive property of this argent stuff, or only a popular use for it, but thanks to this burny nugget of argent I appear to have found the mines.' He held out a hand, which I tentatively took.

One step, two, and... three steps. Four. It took five or six before I realised we'd travelled from the grasslands outside Everynden into somewhere else. An underground somewhere, if the sudden, crisp chill in the air and the dampness against my bare arms was anything to go by.

'I wonder if her queenship knew it would do that,' I said.

'Conspiracy theory says yes,' said Jay.

'Top marks!'

Down below, even the moonlight failed us. We were entombed in the kind of utter darkness that blind, screaming panics are made of, and I engaged in a touch of unseemly haste as I summoned a little light-wisp to save us. White radiance flared. I sent the wisp floating high, and took a moment to collect myself as I looked around.

If you've ever visited natural cave formations, you'll have some idea of what we saw. It wasn't one of those vast, echoing kinds, the sort it would take half an hour to cross. Just a little one, with walls of mottled stone smoothed by endless years and the soft trickle of running water seeping in from somewhere above.