In his exquisite manse of Pem-Y-Rum, ten miles downriver from Chanthed, Cumulus Snoat frowned at Ifoli’s news. He did not like to frown; it marred the perfection of his noble forehead, but in times of the greatest vexation he could not help himself.

“Are you saying Basible Norp has failed me?” said Snoat. Then, “Why do you cringe from me? It’s not your lovely neck under threat.”

Ifoli forced calmness upon herself, and the tension in her jaw muscles eased. “Apparently Wistan secured the college’s treasures before he was killed, but neither the details of the protection spells nor the devices and talismans that maintain them can be located.”

“Do you mean…?”

“Basible can’t break the protections.”

“And therefore can’t deliver me the manuscripts of the first twenty-two Great Tales.”

Snoat touched the edge of Llian’s manuscript with a fingertip. He was so enchanted by it that he had to have it with him wherever he went, and lived in terror that it would be stolen.

“Almost any spell can be broken if enough talent and effort is devoted to it.”

“I can’t bear to wait,” said Snoat. “Nothing satisfies me any more; even my most priceless wines now seem tasteless. I’ll have to burn another library – how else can I cope?” He felt another frown forming. “What about Wistan’s dirt book?”

“Basible found the ashes of a small book, burned some hours before Wistan was killed. Nothing can be resurrected from it.”

“Now I’m vexed!” cried Snoat. “Have you no good news?”

“Your army has swept all before it in the north. You now hold everything between Thurkad and Elludore Forest.”

“Better than nothing,” he said grudgingly, “but far greater prizes lie to the south.”

“You’ll need a bigger army for that.”

“I’m raising one. What news of the despicable Zain?”

“He hasn’t been found.”

“I am most displeased. Go!”

Ifoli did not move. “Cumulus, you gave firm orders that you would see no one this week, but…”

This was almost an insurrection. And yet… “I value you for your ability to think and your appreciation that there may be times when you know my business better than I do. You may speak.”

“The bankrupt chronicler, Thandiwe Moorn, wishes to put a proposition to you.”

“She is utterly destitute?”

“And at the end of her rope. The bailiff will come for her within days, unless —”

“Send her in.”

Shortly Thandiwe entered. Destitute she might be, but she put on a good show. Curvaceous bordering on voluptuous, a waterfall of black hair, a simple but elegant blue gown. She was nowhere near Ifoli’s level of beauty, but for a woman who must have been thirty-six Thandiwe was rather fine. Nervous, though. Her left knee had a tremor. She bowed, a trifle too low.

“Speak,” said Snoat.

“You have a passion for the Great Tales,” said Thandiwe. “I think I can bring you a new one.”

“You think you can bring me a new one.”

“The only certainty in life is death.”

“Especially when I deal it,” he said pointedly. “Go on.”

She squirmed. “A decade ago, in the months before Magister Mendark’s death, he gave Llian almost unfettered access to his personal papers. Mendark wanted Llian to write the tale of his life – his often renewed lives, in fact.”

“Mendark was a great man,” said Snoat, “but fatally flawed.”

“He was at the centre of the greatest events of the past thousand years, and shaped many of them. Yet the tale of his life has never been told.”

“Why not?”

“Llian chose not to because of what he saw as Mendark’s corruption. Llian put his notes into the college library and, as far as I know, I’m the only person who has had full access to them.”

“What does this have to do with me?” said Snoat.

“I want to write the tale but…”

“Debtors’ prison looms.”

“If Basible Norp would give me access to Llian’s notes, and you were to provide modest assistance…”

“You owe Anjo five hundred and fifty tells. Hardly modest.”

“With your support I could make a Great Tale of Mendark’s life and gift the manuscript to you.”

To give away something so valuable she must be desperate. Yet to have the mastership in her grasp twice and lose it both times, lose everything, would make anyone desperate.

“I could not accept it as a gift,” said Snoat.

Thandiwe’s face fell.

“For such a treasure, if it should be voted a Great Tale, I would pay full price,” he added. “After subtracting your debts. I will consider the matter. Ifoli will escort you out.”

Thandiwe forced a smile. Clearly, she had hoped for a clearer indication. Or perhaps she feared he would give Llian’s notes to someone else to write the tale. Perhaps he would.

When she was gone and Ifoli stood beside him again, Snoat said quietly, “Contact Basible. He will send Llian’s notes for this tale with the utmost dispatch.”

“With an armed escort?” said Ifoli. “To make sure they can’t go astray.”

“Quite.”

“What do you think?” Snoat said to Ifoli the following evening.

He had read the key parts of Llian’s notes. Ifoli, now desperately fighting off a beauty-marring weariness, had spent all night and half the day reading eight hundred pages in Llian’s calligraphic hand.

“If certain questions about Mendark’s work were answered, and it was supplemented by an account of his last days and his death, it could make a Great Tale.”

“The twenty-fourth Great Tale. My tale.” He sighed.

“But is she the right person to tell it?”

“Thandiwe is more than competent but less than great. Yet she’s ambitious, passionate… and desperate. No one would work harder to make it a glorious tale. I will commission her. But before I do, I’ve identified an intriguing possibility.” Snoat was testing Ifoli. “I wonder if you saw it too?”

She did not answer for a good while and his congenital mistrust stirred. Was she merely gathering her thoughts, or was she choosing how much to tell him?

“I saw a number of possibilities,” Ifoli said carefully. “To which do you refer?”

“One that might be connected to a certain incomplete device of Mendark’s.” Snoat wasn’t going to give her any more than that. He wanted her unbiased thoughts.

“The one we saw the day we used the secret code to get into the council’s spell vault?”

“Precisely.”

“There could be a new kind of mancery. One that Llian, not having any talent for the Secret Art, did not recognise,” said Ifoli.

“Put it into words for me.”

“Mancery has always been limited because power can only be drawn from two places: within oneself, or from a painstakingly enchanted object…”

“But there’s a hypothesis, the secret of mancery…” he prompted.

“That power – vast amounts of it – could be stored in certain natural objects, right under our noses.”

“Until there’s evidence of it, the secret of mancery remains mere speculation.”

“Judging by Llian’s notes, Mendark may have gained that evidence,” said Ifoli. “He may have been close to mastering the secret, or at least the theory behind it.”

“A theory can’t give me my heart’s desire. Besides, Mendark burned his library before he died and all his work was lost.” Snoat looked at her expectantly. He did not think she was holding anything back, but he had to be sure.

After another long pause, Ifoli said, “Llian read all Mendark’s papers, including his work on mancery. And whatever Llian reads twice, he can remember. What if his memory – what he doesn’t know that he knows – could allow Mendark’s work to be reconstructed?”

Snoat felt all choked up. “If I were capable of love, Ifoli,” he sighed, “you would be the one.”

“Thank you, Cumulus.” He was not sure if she was being ironic.

“The device we saw in the spell vault may have been Mendark’s failed attempt to tap this new source of power,” said Snoat. “If the theory could be turned into a practical magical device, or devices I’d have the power to crack the protection on the twenty-two Great Tales.”

“That could take years,” said Ifoli.

“Unless a genius looked at the problem in an entirely new way.”

“Will that be all, Cumulus?”

“When I was a young man,” Snoat mused, “that doddering old fool, Nadiril the so-called Sage, chased me out of the Great Library with a broomstick. That very day I resolved to build a collection greater than his, then take his from him. With the secret of mancery I could do just that.” Snoat realised that his megalomania was showing. “But I’m daydreaming. Can Llian be compelled to reveal what he knows?”

“With a murder charge hanging over his head he must be even more desperate than Thandiwe.”

“Have her lure him here with a tempting offer. She will oversee his work and make sure he stays honest.”

“And then?” said Ifoli.

“Llian will do a private telling of his Tale of the Mirror, just for me.”

“And then?”

“Where is the pleasure if he can do a telling for anyone else? Where is the joy in owning the original manuscript of his tale if he can make a copy? Besides, if he can assist me to reconstruct the secret of mancery, he can assist someone else.”

“So Llian has to die?” said Ifoli.

“I would apologise to him in advance,” said Snoat. “He’s a great man, even though he is a cursed Zain. I’d explain that I sincerely regretted having to put him down.”

“You might have trouble getting him to appreciate your point of view,” Ifoli said drily.

“One more thing. The chain made by Shuthdar?”

“Ragred has gone to get it from Karan.”