The Line of Illeniel

V.

My father had been friends with another wizard of the old families. That shouldn’t have surprised me, but then I had never known any of them. More interesting was the name ‘Phillip Balistair’. I wondered if he was some relative of Elizabeth Balistair, who I had met last year when she visited Lancaster. From the wording I assumed he was the Anath’Meridum of George Prathion. Too many new facts were rattling around in my skull and I struggled to put them all in place.

More curious was the way the letter was signed, ‘V’. The only person with a V in their name of the royal family in Gododdin, that I knew of, was Valerius; the ill-fated last king of that country. That didn’t mean much of course, my knowledge of royal bloodlines was next to nothing. The royal Graeling family could have had a dozen members with names beginning in the letter ‘v’. I only happened to know Valerius’ name because he had been the last king there.

Had King Edward known of Tyndal’s connections to Gododdin? There were too many things I was ignorant of. Considering what had happened at Lancaster last year many of those things might be deadly. Ignorance would be no shield if more of my father’s old enemies came knocking on my door.

“Mordecai…” Penny’s voice came to me from the hall. “Let’s find something to eat, the daylight is waning.” My stomach agreed with her, so I got up and we went in search of Rose, hoping she would know of a good place to eat.