A Good Defence

“Well, I guess he got away.”

I groaned, feeling the ache and strain of fighting hit me all at once as I calmed down from my battle fury.

Crispin and Olive began searching the laboratory while I took a few moments to recover. It pained me to admit, but I was no spring chicken anymore. The fight had really taken it out of me.

“What’s that big book you’ve got there, Crispin?” I asked. Crispin dropped the book back onto Odwald’s desk with a resounding thunk.

“I was just checking if there was something underneath it,” he explained. “It looks pretty boring.”

“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” said Olive. She turned the front page and read the inscription. “‘Property of Odwald Ebonheart.’ Is this his diary?”

Olive read aloud snippets from the book. Odwald had been researching the Aspect of Fire, just like us. He had been over the same books in the library, just like us, and what’s more he had the missing pages that had been denied to us. The latest diary entry had been torn out, but up until that point, at least, Odwald had found no success in discovering a way to defeat or seal away the Aspect of Fire.

It confirmed the doubts that had been gnawing at me through the fight: Odwald Ebonheart was not our true enemy.

“Just like us,” I murmured. “He worked out that we can’t destroy the Aspect of Fire. What I’d give to speak to him again.”

I tried shouting for Odwald a few times but with no response. At first I thought his spell of invisibility was keeping him hidden from us, but after we explored the passageway on the other side of the laboratory it became clear that it led to a sloping tunnel that opened out into the great outdoors outside the Avium. Odwald really had escaped us.

“We’d better check on the real Mordane Swiftgale,” I said, impatient to be doing something again.

“One moment, Plume,” said Crispin, scooping a variety of cobblefright bones into his arms and dumping them into the Bag of Holding. After this he immediately bent over and started gathering another armload. These too went into the bag. After that he bent over again.

“Crispin, Crispin,” I waved my wings trying to get his attention. “That’s quite enough! We don’t need to take the entire cobblefright.”

“Just a few more, Plume,” continued Crispin cheerily. “I’m going to use them in my next augury.”

“You’re not the one that has to carry them,” I grumbled.

---

The dark-feathered Strig was still tied up in the chair where we had left him before the battle began. His chest rose and fell slowly in a steady rhythm. He didn’t appear to be suffering any ill-effects from his imprisonment.

Crispin walked up to Mordane, pulled a pancake from his pot once again, and slapped him sharply across the beak.

Mordane opened his eyes blearily and his head twitched from side to side as he came to his senses. Crispin looked shocked that this had worked.

“Err,” Crispin stumbled on his words as he backed away from Mordane. “Olive, say something!”

Fortunately Olive thinks quickly on her feet.

“Do you know who we are?” asked Olive.

Mordane blinked twice as he sized up the situation. “No,” he said. “I do not.”

“That proves it,” Olive whispered to Crispin and me. “We only ever met Odwald disguised as Mordane: never Mordane himself!”

I shrugged. “That’s good enough for me.”

“Excuse me,” Mordane continued, attempting to move his wings. “Minor question. Why am I in bondage?”

“You’ve been down here for some time,” said Crispin. “Would you like a pancake?”

“I’d like to be free,” said Mordane. He shook his bound wings and coughed up a bit of grey goo.

“If we untie you, will you attack us?” asked Olive.

“Will you attack me?” asked Mordane, eyeing Crispin suspiciously.

Crispin blanched and put the pancake back in his cooking pot.

I stepped behind the chair and sliced the rope that bound Mordane’s wings and talons. He climbed unsteadily to his feet and stretched out his considerable wingspan. Then he thought better of it and sat back in the chair.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” asked Olive.

“Well, I was working at my desk in the upper library,” said Mordane. “There were some footsteps behind me. I assumed a student was coming to ask for help navigating the stacks. Then the next thing I know, I’m here being interviewed by… you three.”

“The Defenders of Alderheart,” corrected Crispin. “That’s us.”

---

In a short while we helped Mordane to his feet and walked with him back through the main section of the library. He hadn’t fully regained fine control over his legs, so he swayed awkwardly from side to side. Still his mind seemed to be unaffected, and on the way he pressed us to give an account of what had been happening in Alderheart while he was in stasis. Fortunately I had my journal with me to help fill in the gaps.

“Four months,” Mordane repeated to himself and wobbled. “I can’t believe the library has operated for four months without a librarian.”

I wasn’t really sure what to say to this. Crispin elbowed Olive and she came to the rescue with another one of her famously smooth changes of subject.

“So, have you read any good books lately?”

Mordane considered this. “I suppose not. I’ve been encased in goo.”

“Well I have,” said Olive cheerfully. She went on to describe a recent thriller written by Gullian Flown called ‘Vanished Vulpin’ which, according to her review, had quite the twist in the second half.

“We’ve been in your library for the last week,” I said, interrupting this reverie. “Mostly attempting to research the Aspect of Fire and how it was sealed to end the Great Calamity.”

As we passed through the library bookshelves, Mordane couldn’t help but attempt to reach for books related to the subject. But, every time he approached a shelf he scanned it quickly and then stepped back with a disgruntled grunt.

“I know,” I commiserated. “We’ve been having the same problem. It turns out that all our efforts were being thwarted.” I turned my gaze to Mordane. “By you.”

Mordane looked shocked. “Me?”

“Or so we thought. It turned out to be someone that looked exactly like you.”

“Well this is highly irregular,” he concluded. “The Dean will want to hear all about this.”

---

The Dean and the other professors met us in the corridors as we marched on towards his office. It seemed like most of the school was awake, despite the late hour, and out in force to see some final confrontation between the Defenders of Alderheart and the Faculty of the Avium.

“Well,” said the Dean testily. “Did you find out what you want? Have you come to tell us you’re ready to leave the Avium?”

“In a sense, yes,” I said, wary of the crowd of students watching from side chambers and stairways above and below us. “We found out some very interesting information about the strange occurrences in the Avium and the obstacles to our investigations.”

The Dean ruffled his feathers. “Well, out with it then.”

“Mordane Swiftgale,” I said, addressing the librarian. “Do you recall reporting us to the Dean and demanding that we be expelled from the Avium?”

“Not in the slightest,” said Mordane amiably. “Since I only met you three Defenders of Alderheart this evening.”

“So you’ve wiped his memories,” said the Dean. “Marvelous. Simply marvelous.”

“We haven’t meddled with his memories,” said Olive. “We rescued him from the lower library where he has been imprisoned these past four months.”

At this the students started whispering and murmuring questions and theories to each other all at once. Though each of them thought they were talking quietly the noise soon rose to a gentle clamour as they tried to make themselves heard.

A glare from the Dean silenced them.

“You’d better have some evidence to support your claims,” he said calmly, recovering his usual poise. “We’ve seen Mordane on multiple occasions: how do you explain this?”

“We found him encased in this,” said Olive, offering a vial of the grey slime to the Dean. He motioned Professor Glinda Nightseed forward to inspect it.

“He was kept there by an imposter who took his place in the library,” I said. “We found and fought him tonight and defeated a terrible creature he had constructed out of servitor bones.”

Crispin eagerly poured the remains of the cobblefright out of the Bag of Holding onto the carpet in front of the Dean and Glinda.

“They’re big,” Crispin explained, pointing to the big bones. “And they taste old.”

Glinda looked at him curiously.

“You licked bones earlier too!” Crispin said in his defence.

“There are auras of necromantic energy from all of these specimens,” confirmed Glinda, pointing to the cobblefright bones and the sample of grey goo. “The bones certainly were animated by necromancy until very recently.”

“They formed a creature that the creator called a ‘cobblefright’,” I continued. “This was what terrorised the student Figory Figgins outside his window several nights back.”

There was a high-pitched squeak from somewhere in the crowd. “That’s me!”

“That may be,” said the Dean undeterred. “But this doesn’t explain how the alleged imposter was able to appear before us in Mordane’s form. That sort of illusion would take considerable magic, perhaps even the power of an artifact to achieve.”

“I think I have the answer to that right here,” said Crispin, still rummaging in the Bag of Holding. He pulled out the silver pendant we had found hanging in the cupboard below the library. “Watch this!”

Crispin lifted the pendant up into the air and pulled it down over his head. There was a sudden shift in his shape and his plump form stretched and darkened into black feathers, a tall figure with inquisitive Birdfolk eyes. He had become a perfect imitation of Mordane Swiftgale.

“I like pancakes,” said the fake Mordane. “Crispin is the best!”

“Is that what I sound like?” Mordane asked one of the other professors. “Heavens.”

“Fine,” said the Dean. “You’ve made your point. I want Professor Revayne to examine that pendant and I want you three to follow me to my office. We should finish this discussion in private.”

We left to the collective sighs of the watching students. The show was over. Nothing more to see here.