'Familiars?' I said, looking up at Miranda. 'Isn't that an outlawed art at home?'
'Not quite. It's strictly regulated, to the point that it might as well be banned as far as most people are concerned. Reason being, people are stupid. They try to take on creatures of far greater magickal potency than they can handle. The beast suffers, and the owner probably ends up as mincemeat.' Miranda's tone indicated her utter lack of sympathy for the latter.
'Okay, so it isn't a banned art here,' I said, leafing through the book.
Miranda took it off me, and opened it up at a chapter headed: Griffins.
'Griffin Familiars?' I squeaked. 'How's that possible?'
'I don't know if it still is, even here,' said Miranda. 'This book's eighty years old. But it was.'
'It is an art still practiced in some countries beyond Britain,' Em offered. 'Even with the greater beasts.' She looked at me in a thoughtful way that, for some reason, made me uneasy. 'Ves, some would say your relationship with Adeline is a form of Familiar-bonding.'
'Pup, too,' said Miranda. 'Or at least, that's where it's going.'
I may have blanched. 'But, um, that's illegal.'
'Not if you're properly regulated and acting with due authority,' said Miranda.
'But I'm not.'
'Want to bet?' said Jay. 'You think Milady isn't on top of all that?'
'Um.' I looked at Miranda. 'That lirrabird. Is that a familiar?'
'I'm building such a bond. It's... easier, here.'
Of course it was easier around here. It would be.
I thought about that.
'Why is this relevant?' said Jay to Miranda.
She scowled. 'I'm not sure if it is. But since everything about this little adventure keeps coming back to griffins, it could be useful to know.'
'It really could,' I said. 'Thank you.'
With a curt nod, she withdrew, taking the book with her.
'We're going back to the henge complex, right?' said Jay, fixing me with the eyes of hope.
'It does seem the quickest way to travel a few counties south.'
Jay rocketed out of his chair and was halfway to the door before I had time to draw breath.
I looked at Em. 'I think he likes that place.'
She smirked. 'What if I offered you a chocolate fountain the size of Stonehenge—'
'Say no more.' My eyes grew big.
'That's how Jay feels about those henge complexes.'
'In that case we'd better hurry, or we might never see him again.'
We didn't catch up with Jay until we arrived at the gates of the henge complex. Whether he'd run all the way up the hill or just sprouted wings and flown, I couldn't have said. He stood a few feet short of the first of the stone circles, visibly impatient.
'Sorry,' I gasped as we came up. 'I haven't your stride. Or your deep lust for limitless Waytravel.'
'Got Addie?' he said, ignoring that.
'Kind of.' I tapped my bosom area, where my syrinx pipes lay safely hidden.
'Er.' Jay looked, and hastily looked away again. 'Is that a yes?'
'Don't ask me where she goes when she's not at my side, but she always comes when I whistle. And she's got to be safer wherever-that-is than trotting along at our heels.' We'd learned that the interesting way. Too many people took a greedy interest in my pretty Adeline.
Jay shrugged. 'Ok. She's your Familiar. Keep her wherever you like.'
'She's not—' I caught the twinkle of mischief in his eye, and abandoned my protest half-made. 'Fine.'
Jay had apparently had time to acquire travel tokens from the perambulatory kiosk, for he put one into my hand, and repeated the procedure with Em and Miranda. This one was cool to the touch and peculiarly incorporeal. I mean, I could see that a disk of something silvery lay in my palm, but all I could feel of it was a faint chill.
'Destination?' said Em.
'There's a major henge complex in Derby, seems to be the largest one in the area.'
'Derby may also have the largest library in the area, then,' said Em.
Jay nodded.
Pup writhed in my arms and tried to slither to the ground. I almost dropped both satchel and token, trying to hang onto her. 'Here,' I said, and handed her off to Em. I could've gentled her with a charm, but I don't like to do that to Goodie. It seems wrong to humble her mischievous little spirit just because it's inconvenient.
I suppose being forcibly detained by someone as large and inescapable as Em is much the same, as far as Pup's concerned.
Needs must.
'Come on.' Jay, bored with waiting for us to sort ourselves out, strode away. The three of us trailed obediently behind.
He made straight for a circle of stones of a kind I couldn't remember seeing before. A species of fluorite, if my gem-knowledge did not mislead me, with rough, alternating bands of misty-white and purple-blue. These had an airy delicacy about them which pleased me, not to mention their most attractive colour.
'These are nice,' I said as I stepped into the circle after Jay. 'What are they made o—'
Swoosh. The rest of my sentence dissolved into a shriek — more of surprise than fear, I swear. I was used to travelling with Jay, and it always took him a minute or so to muster up the Winds and orient himself, or whatever it was he did when he was preparing to go. But Waymastery in the henge complexes of the Fifth was instantaneous.
We reappeared, winded and speechless, in the midst of another such complex.
Jay had described it as the largest henge complex in the area; that in no way prepared me for the sheer hugeness of it. Scarborough's, impressive as it was, faded into insignificance in comparison. The complex must've been the size of a full football field, its surface intricately patterned with more henges than I wanted to try to count. Some of them were only about two feet across, large enough for a single person to travel through at a time.
Others... well. I tipped my head way, way back, trying to see the tops of a series of bloodstone pillars near the base of which we had emerged. The things must have been the height of a two-storey house, at least. The air bristled with jutting stones; sunlight glinted off a hundred different types of gem; and... something caught at my... everything, and pulled.
My left foot, I realised too late, had strayed into the edge of an alabaster circle. I don't normally feel these particular kinds of magicks; not being a Waymaster, I'm as oblivious to them as a deaf person is to Mozart's violin concertos.
This was different.
'Ah...' I said, filled with unease, as something deeply magickal about that henge-circle communed with something deeply magickal about me. 'This is not—'
I fell sideways, and vanished in a spray of magickal fireworks.
'Jay...!' I shrieked as the world upended around me.
I thought I heard cursing as I disappeared.
I definitely heard cursing twelve seconds later.
When the world righted itself again and the nauseating blur faded from my eyes, I beheld the face of Jay, creased with annoyance. 'This,' he said, grabbing my hand in a vice-like grip, 'is going to prove really inconvenient.'
'This what?' I was set on my feet upright, and towed after Jay, who walked straight back into the nearest henge (lapis lazuli, very nice) without pause.
'This whatever is going on with you.' I detected a wince, but he didn't loose his hold on my hand.
'I find it a trifle inconvenient myse—' I began, but a rush of wind stole the rest of my words, as we vanished back into the Ways.
'No harm done?' said Emellana, seconds later. She and Miranda stood waiting with a placidity I might have found disconcerting, if I wasn't so busy catching my breath.
'She's in one piece.' Jay hadn't let go of my hand, and did not seem to have any plans to do so.
As a probable consequence of which, his eyes were changing colour again.
I decided not to tell him.
'Right, now we're going,' he said, and marched off, pulling me gently but firmly along behind him.
'Wait,' I said. 'What's going on? Am I a Waymaster now?'
'Did you do that intentionally?'
'No, but—'
'Then you aren't a Waymaster.'
'Then what am I—' I stopped dead, silenced, because unless I was crazy that was a familiar wide-brimmed hat vanishing into a milky labradorite henge about twenty feet ahead of us. 'Is that... no, surely it can't be.'
'It was,' said Jay grimly, and broke into a run. 'Come on!'
I didn't need much encouragement. That hat, with its distinctive curving shape, and floating as it had been about four feet from the floor, could only belong to our shady little "friend", Wyr. The one who'd tried to sell Adeline to the beast-traders of Vale.
The one who'd purloined Torvaston's scroll-case, and absconded with it.
I'd wondered at the time what he wanted with that item in particular, and hadn't been able to come up with an answer.
Well, apparently he was as desirous of finding the Hyndorin Mountains as we were. Was there something in those lost mountains that interested the sticky-fingered little creep? That interested me rather a lot.
'Em!' I shouted, stretching out my free hand behind me. 'Catch hold, and grab Mir. We're going to be—'
Travelling tokenless, I was going to say, which would mean we'd have to keep hold of Jay if we wanted to be taken along. But there wasn't time. Just as Em's large hand closed around my small one, Jay ran full-tilt into the embrace of those milk-white stones, and my breath escaped in a rush as we fell headlong into the Ways once again.
We came out somewhere higher up, if the chill in the air was anything to go by. A vast blue sky dotted with clouds stretched overhead; I glimpsed feathery grasses, and smelled summer flowers. Several henges were spread over the hillside even up here, though these were all of a less polished appearance: limestone or granite, white and dark, moss-grown and aged.
There was no sign of Wyr.
Jay stood, panting, and turned us in circles, hoping to spot something of the thief. 'Um,' he said. 'I can't tell where he's gone.'
'Em?' I said, kindly releasing her hand. I tried to detach myself from Jay, too, entirely for his benefit, but his fingers closed the more tightly on mine, until my bones creaked.
'Don't let go yet,' said Jay. 'Can't be sure you won't be swept away again.'
I abandoned my efforts with a small sigh. 'Em, can you tell which circle's been most recently used?'
Her eyes brightened, and she nodded. 'I think so,' she murmured, already in motion. 'There is a certain residue, like a brightness...' She dismissed a set of crumbling limestone blocks with a shake of her head, and shortly afterwards a taller series of dark, almost black granite stones. 'Ah,' she said then, pausing at the third. Humble, that one, to say the least: there were no stones visible, just a circuit of raised bumps in the grass. 'This one.'
'Sure?' said Jay, watching her with intent, moon-silver eyes.
I winced.
Em did her brisk, authoritative nod, the one I always found reassuring.
Jay apparently did, too, for he didn't hesitate. I had just time to grab hold of Emellana again and off we went, tumbling into the windy embrace of the modest, grassy henge.
On the other side, a wild, blasted heath awaited us, a landscape straight out of a Bronte novel. Not a scrap of greenery met my eyes, only tawny-brown scrub and bare earth. Huge boulders lay scattered about, haphazard; not henges, these, just socking great rocks. We were truly high up high, now; the wind whistled and howled past my ears, and around us stretched a rolling, rocky landscape bare of all signs of human habitation.
Well, almost. Someone had thoughtfully carved their names into the nearest of the gigantic boulders. Rufus & June. Nice touch.
I felt something shift, behind me. A disturbance, slight in truth, but prominent in my weirdly amplified state. I preferred to attribute my unseemly dizziness to the same source. I whirled, turning giddy in an instant, and contrived to fall heavily atop the small, scarcely-visible person attempting to slither unobtrusively away.
'Hello, Wyr,' I growled, catching hold of his jacket with both hands. 'I'd really like to talk to you.'