Modern Magick

The Heart of Hyndorin: 13

To call our next destination a Royal Bedchamber would be to grossly understate the impact of the place.

It wasn't fit for a king so much as a... well, a god. In size alone, it staggered me. Okay, Torvaston was a troll, and they aren't short, but even so: how much space does one person need? We emerged in a chamber the approximate size of a football field (yes, I exaggerate, but not by much). Dominating the centre of that space was a bed large enough to sleep about thirty human-sized people. Its four posts were trees, crystalline and sparkling but clearly tree-shaped, and apparently alive. Canopies of cobwebby gauze hung about it, and its pillows and blankets had the kind of plushness a Ves could cheerfully sink into forever.

I've never seen an article of furniture so clearly scream magick!

The rest of the décor was of a piece with it. Lamps of contorted crystal hung from the ceiling and erupted from the walls, glowing under their own power; carpets covered the hardwood floor, their patterns and colours shifting as I looked at them; cabinets held artefacts safely behind glass, though every time I glanced their way I beheld a different array of objects.

Etc. If this was the lifestyle of a king in a magick-soaked enclave, I could definitely see its upside.

Luan walked through that room as though he walked in the presence of a god. His soft-footed, wide-eyed, reverential behaviour unnerved me. Did he think Torvaston was going to show up?

Was Torvaston going to show up?

'You look petrified,' Jay said, glancing at me.

I composed my features. 'It's the word "god" that did it,' I said.

'And?'

'Any sane person is terrified of gods.'

'Does that include the giddy kind you keep referring to?'

'A degree of healthy irreverence is good for a person,' I retorted.

Jay made no answer, save for his by-now-familiar eyebrow quirk that said whatever you say, Ves.

I shut my mouth.

Jay was right about the bedchamber more nearly resembling a museum. Like the rest of the tower (or as much as we had seen of it), it was meticulously well-kept, without a speck of dust or dirt anywhere. Considering these rooms had been sealed for centuries, however, that fact registered as highly unusual. Moreover, it had the air of a museum about it, of a place not merely dusted and swept but preserved. As though the effects of time had been, if not outright stopped, then at least slowed down.

Strong magicks indeed.

I wondered again why Torvaston had closed off this room, while apparently going to some trouble to preserve it. For whom? The chances that anyone would manage to follow his obscure trail of clues and oblique references and stray magickal bits-and-bobs were vanishingly small, which was why hundreds of years had passed before anyone had done so.

And I still felt like we were here more by some kind of fluke than by our own efforts.

Or by Milady's possible flickers of clairvoyance. After all, it was she who had manoeuvred things so that we could keep our mischievous nose-for-gold Pup. It was Pup who had retrieved the scroll-case from Farringale, and brought it to me. It was Milady again who had brought in the Baron, and through him we had forged links with the Court at Mandridore — who had sent us out here. With Alban in pursuit, bearing just the things we needed to get into this room.

I shied away from concluding that anything like fate had brought us here; that would be absurd. But a somewhat manipulated run of "luck" certainly had. So then, why?