Modern Magick

The Heart of Hyndorin: 10

So much for my brilliant theory. Torvaston came here to perfect his magick-regulating device, I'd thought, so that he could someday go home and repair the damage he had helped to cause at Farringale. True, I had come up with no ideas as to why he never had gone back — except that the device, perhaps, never worked.

To hear that he had actively chosen not to go back, and indeed to hide the thing from everyone who might come looking for him... well, that changed things.

'I don't understand,' I said.

The elderly troll straightened. 'If I tell you that your purpose in coming here cannot be fulfilled, and Torvaston's work will never be released to you. Do you, then, still wish to ask questions of me?'

'Of course,' I said, frowning.

He nodded once, and held out his hand, Torvaston's compass still tucked into his palm. As I took it, he tightened his fingers briefly around mine, before releasing me. I hoped it was a gesture of goodwill. His scrutiny of me appeared, now, more curious than suspicious. 'The sixth Britain,' he mused. 'But Torvaston always said that magick would decline there, and you— do not appear to bear out that theory.'

Not bristling with magick as I was, no. I stood there as his (temporary) equal, a natural part of all that lovely magickal flow. 'It's complicated,' I said.

His lips curved in a faint smile. 'I am the seventeenth Earl Evemer,' he said. 'But you may call me Luan.'

I made him my best Milady-curtsey, which prompted another smile. Then I ruined it by saying, 'Call me Ves.'

Quarter of an hour later, I sat in a quiet parlour some floors below with Earl Evemer, being plied with good things. Always my favourite part of any mission.

'You are not, then, here alone?' I enquired, somewhere in the midst of my third scone.

'Oh, no. We are not so numerous as once we were, of course, but twenty-one wardens remain, along with our families.'

'Wardens?'

'Our lineages were tasked with the care and protection of the tower and its contents, before His Majesty died. Some few of us have died out in the intervening centuries, but enough remain.'

Seventy or eighty people, perhaps, in a building the size of a small town. No wonder it felt deserted, or some parts of it did. Here on the lower floors, I'd seen signs enough of habitation, though we had not yet encountered anyone else.

'You never bring in anyone from outside?'

'Outside?' he echoed, aghast. 'Never.'

I thought about everything I had seen beyond this serene enclave forgotten by time, and couldn't wonder at it. Twenty-one wardens and their families could never be enough to protect the tower from the likes of Wyr, and his trade-partners of Vale. Hungry for profit, morally moribund, and devoid of respect for either history or consequence, they'd decimate the place.

But, how isolated an existence. And the ultimate fate of everyone who lived here must be a final and irrevocable decline.

I was growing tired of that general theme.

Earl Evemer — Luan — munched his way slowly through a sweet roll, his gaze fixed somewhere on the middle distance. I didn't rush him. Having just given him the speedy low-down on everything that had led me to his tower, my next duty was to leave him a moment to think it over.

And devour a couple more delicacies in the process. Gods, but I was hungry.

By the time he again spoke, I was happily replete and dozing off in my dangerously comfortable armchair. A fire burned in the grate, around which we and our tea-table were arranged. Watching the flames, I'd been close to gliding off to sleep.