“Come on, I want to show you something,” Hajarean offers. “Before everyone else arrives.”

“What?”

“Come on, you’ll see.”

“It’s his collection,” his granddaughter explains, with a roll of her eyes. Her name, we’ve been told already, is Alison; Allie for short. It’s very weird, hearing an English name here. “You’d better go or he’ll sulk all evening.” She’s a pretty, redheaded girl of about twelve who’s already taken Asuti in hand, it seems, showing her around.

So we follow him downstairs, through the wine cellars where he finds and lights a whale-oil lamp, and through a door and into wonderland.

“Surprise surprise there’s a big problem with looting of ancient sites in Jeodin; especially burial sites. You could almost say it’s a tradition. I can’t honestly say I didn’t contribute to the problem.” He grins back at us over the yellow light. We’re in a vault, with shelves and shelves of – judging by those closest to us – archaeological finds. He turns his back to us and leads on. “For about the first fifteen years after I got here I’m afraid I developed a taste for tomb raiding. The difference,” he stresses, “is that we went in carefully and recorded what we saw, where things were. We got a good record of a number of pristine sites that otherwise would have been smashed up by thugs looking for magical items.”

“I bet you found a few of those too,” Sam says.

“Oh yes. That’s what made it such an interesting time.” He flashes another grin at us. “Oh, those were the days. There were a few places we had to leave a little rapidly.”

“I don’t suppose you happened to come across any especially pretty girdles by any chance?” Sam asks insouciantly.

“Ah… hehe. There… must be nearly a thousand pieces of jewellery that might be magical that we haven’t fully identified yet,” Hajarean says. “I’m sorry.”

“Meh, that would be too easy I suppose,” Sam says.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned here, it’s that nothing is ever too easy when it comes to magical artifacts. Personally I find it safest to think of them as toxic waste and handle them accordingly. I’m not at all sorry for taking as many of them as I can out of circulation.” He stops again and looks at us seriously. “I have lost several good friends to such artifacts. I don’t intend to lose more. I’d almost rather give my youngest grandchild a loaded gun. The outcome would be far more predictable and probably less messy in the long run.”

“I get the impression you don’t approve,” I say.

“They’re dangerous and they’re unnecessary. We’re better than that.” He continues through the vault.

I think, as I follow, on how what he’s saying mirrors my own feelings about magic; my discomfort even at a spell that seemed to go well, even before the disaster when it didn’t. I wonder if it’s something about where we came from, how we grew up, that makes magical things – by the scientific, mechanical way of thinking we grew up with – unsettling and unpredictable; enjoyable as a fantasy, not when it gets real and things start behaving in ways that are just not rational.

We come to another door and he unlocks it and leads us through. “Here we are.” Another still room. Fewer shelves, more larger artifacts, dimly seen in the light of the single lamp. Amphorae, shields, long serrated harpoons, primitive, tribal-looking ornate masks, glinting as if alive as the light moves past them. “Hang on, let’s shed a little more light on the situation.”

He starts around the room, lighting more lamps from the one he’s carrying, pushing back the shadows.

“In the movies the lamps would already be lit,” I point out.

“More likely candles,” Sam says.

“Ah, naked flame would be a bad idea in here,” Hajarean answers, still going round the room. I can see more of what’s in here. “There’s a number of dessicated— Ah, you found it,” he says, seeing what I’m looking at.

In the middle of the room there is a basalt statue. It is the figure of a Neri woman, naked and powerful, almost lifesize, but stylised and elongated with an impossibly serene, unknowable face, worn smooth with age. It contrasts with her hair, which is a tangling mass of braids and charms such that for a moment I think it’s a depiction of a medusa. It’s unmistakeably ancient.

“Elves don’t have statues made of themselves, as a rule,” Hajarean is saying from behind the basalt figure as I approach. “I suppose when you’re apt to outlast any statue made of you, its purpose as a statement for posterity is… a little undermined. We think this was made by the first humans – the first Sapi, rather – to settle here in Jeodin. They had lost their homes, whether to… war or natural disaster I don’t know. She led them here, and they followed, in their tiny carved-out boats, across the vast ocean dividing us from the eastern mainlands.” He puts his lamp down on a table and looks at the figure thoughtfully. “There have been waves of immigration since then, of course. These days the descendants of those first early settlers are confined mostly to the southern islands. Still, I sometimes wonder why she did it. Why did she bring them here centuries, possibly millennia before Sapi seafaring abilities would have got them here on their own.”

“Find her and ask her?” Sam suggests.

“She’s a Satthei,” I answer softly. “Her ship-tree couldn’t possibly survive this long. How old is this?” I ask Hajarean.

“About four and a half thousand years, according to the mage I brought in to examine it.” Smile. “It’s possible she has some living children, but how do we find them? We don’t even know her name.” He puts on a pair of silken gloves, then moves aside to one of the shelving units and carefully lifts out something that glints with gold. “This was found in the carcass of a ship-tree we discovered not far from the statue. The rest of the carcass was extremely fragile. It started disintegrating as soon as it was exposed to air. As soon as we realised, all we could do was fill in the dig again as fast as possible, to preserve what’s left in case someone in the future can deal with it more appropriately. We found this though, near where we think the stern would have been.”

It looks like a golden mask.

“It’s either a mask, and the straps have rotted away centuries ago, or it’s the faceplate of a helmet, and the rest of it’s missing. Alternatively it might not have been meant to be worn at all, in life or death. It might be a part of some kind of avatar, I’m not sure. Look familiar?”

He holds it up to face me. It seems to glitter in the lamplight.

“It looks like her.”

“This is Neri handiwork. The styling is much more naturalistic, as you can see, although it’s got these typical sweeping…” He indicates the fin-shaped ear-shields, like exaggeratedly-pointed ears themselves. “Come and look closer,” he invites. I move closer.

I bend a little to look at the mask closely. The surface of the face isn’t smooth metal after all, but hundreds, possibly thousands, of tiny gold fish scales; almost every one seeming individually shaped for its location, as if they might move, and form an expression. The workmanship is so remarkable I don’t notice for almost a minute that there are no eyeholes, only the tiniest of scales over closed eyelids. There are also no holes that I can see for the nose or mouth.

“Death mask?” I ask.

“That’s what I thought at first. Except there’s absolutely no record anywhere of the Neri ever using them. Elves don’t make tombs for posterity either. They prefer to go back to the earth, or the sea, or whatever. Hey, maybe that’s why no-one ever found remains back in the other world.” He grins.

It looks alien. I haven’t seen anything like this since coming here, and there are no echoes from any earlier memories. There’s something primal about it, even with the typically fine Neri attention to detail.

“Put it this way, it’s more than a thousand years older than Tutenkhamun’s mask,” Hajarean points out. “But I don’t think it’s ceremonial. Not purely, anyway. I’m almost convinced it had a functional purpose.”

“Anyone tried it on?” Sam asks.

“No. And I don’t want you to either,” Hajarean says pre-emptively to me. “There seems to be a nasty tradition in magic jewellery of things that don’t come off once you put them on. Ever. It tends to be the more powerful items too, which presumably isn’t coincidental, and if this does do anything it’s probably something quite impressive.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not tempted,” I say. I am fascinated by it though, and bend to look even closer. “What does it do?”

“I have no idea. Don’t… get too close.” I stand up straight sharply. He gives me an apologetic look. “Just in case. I mean, it probably won’t do anything until you deliberately put it on but… let’s not take chances, eh?”

“Okay.”

“This one hasn’t shown signs of self-motility before, but…” He steps back and turns to put it back on its shelf. I watch it as he takes it away, finally forcing myself to look back at the statue. Yes, she has the same expression as the mask, even; and as I look at it again, I can just make out the impression of elongated fin-shapes protecting the ears. “There you go, I guess. The earliest Neri relics I’ve been able to find. What do you think?”

“Uhm…” I say. “I don’t know. Weird, I guess.”

“It’s not jogging any memories? Stuff Taniel might have learned before?”

I shake my head.

“No-one seems to know anything. It’s odd. You’d think the age that elves live, someone would know something about this. It’s like a whole part of their culture has been… I don’t know, wilfully forgotten.”

“It’s so… I mean, you can tell it’s Neri, but they don’t do this whole fish-motif thing any more at all. The scales and fins and stuff. You see it in the old books, but not any more. It’s so passé.”

“Well, maybe it didn’t just go out of fashion,” Hajarean speculates. “Maybe they turned their backs on it for a reason.”