Jenny tipped half a bag of each into the glue and then began to stir the thick mixture with a big stick. I made her persevere for a good ten minutes, until the salt and iron were properly mixed in. Then I helped her, using a rope to lower the heavy bucket into the pit. Jenny jumped down beside it and, using an ordinary paintbrush, began to coat the walls.

“You have to cover every inch,” I told her, “or the boggart will make itself really small and escape. If it was a ripper boggart, then you’d be the next person on the menu. It would drain your blood in less than a minute. If it was a stone-chucker, then it would probably come back with a small boulder and drop it on your head, cracking it open like an egg. Boggarts are dangerous, so you’ve got to do the binding correctly. Make one mistake, and you’re dead.”

After Jenny had finished the walls to my satisfaction, I took her hand and helped her climb out. Then I hauled up the bucket. Next I showed her how to tie the brush to a long stick, and she used this to reach down and paint the bottom of the pit with the mixture.

She’d almost finished when I heard a shout from the edge of the western garden. It was Grimalkin. I went and called out to the boggart, letting it know that she was not to be touched, and then escorted her back to the pit.

“I see you work your apprentices hard!” she exclaimed, watching Jenny. Then she turned to me. “Here.” She held out a sheaf of paper bound with string. “These are my findings and speculations concerning the haizda mage and the Kobalos creatures I studied. It is the sum of what I have learned so far. Study it well. I will return within the week, and we will talk again.”

“Are you heading north now?” I asked.

“Northeast,” she replied. “I have a few things to organize.”

When she had left, Jenny and I got cleaned up and went into the library. She spent the first half hour writing down what she’d learned about binding boggarts, while I began to read Grimalkin’s notes.

The Contents of the Glass Containers: These are all biological, and in most cases held within some preserving material, usually a gel. Some are seeds; others animal (mammalian or reptilian samples plus hybrids).

Many are still alive, held in a state of suspended animation. I believe that, if planted, the seeds would grow. The same is probably also true of the animal samples. (I tested only three, which confirmed this.) They are all capable of development and growth, but into what I cannot say without further dangerous experimentation.

However, we know that the Kobalos have used dark magic to create many special creatures, such as builders (the whoskor, which maintain and extend the walls of Valkarky) and fighting entities (such as the haggenbrood). They may well use similar creatures in war. It could be that the dead haizda mage was preparing to create such entities locally and hide them within our borders, ready for a preemptive strike.