Scotland, 1953. Eileen Binchy is pulled from her work as an archivist in Edinburgh and sent to fill a vacant teaching post at her old school of magic. She arrives at Dunroven Academy prepared to endure her professional exile, only to find it further complicated by Calum Markaine, her former classmate, who is assigned to teach alongside her despite the lingering stain of past crimes.
When Eileen suspects that Calum’s return conceals a purpose darker than scandal, she follows him across centuries on a hunt for lost, powerful relics. But the closer she comes to understanding what he wants, the less certain she is whether Calum is the threat at the heart of it all or the one person she can trust.
The Gold Keepers is a grown-up magic school fantasy steeped in tension and mystery, with time travel, elemental magic, and slow-burn romantic suspense.
Scotland, 1953. Eileen Binchy is pulled from her work as an archivist in Edinburgh and sent to fill a vacant teaching post at her old school of magic. She arrives at Dunroven Academy prepared to endure her professional exile, only to find it further complicated by Calum Markaine, her former classmate, who is assigned to teach alongside her despite the lingering stain of past crimes.
When Eileen suspects that Calum’s return conceals a purpose darker than scandal, she follows him across centuries on a hunt for lost, powerful relics. But the closer she comes to understanding what he wants, the less certain she is whether Calum is the threat at the heart of it all or the one person she can trust.
The Gold Keepers is a grown-up magic school fantasy steeped in tension and mystery, with time travel, elemental magic, and slow-burn romantic suspense.
Eight Months Earlier, or Eight Centuries Later
Eileen Binchy raised her hand to knock, but the door swung open before her, seemingly on its own. Her fist hovered, frozen in place like a child stopping short at the boundary between beach and frigid sea.
A familiar but unexpected voice called out, “Miss Binchy, come in.”
Eileen took the plunge. Inside the office, Dunroven Headmistress Rhona Caldwell stood by an imposing fireplace. The bright flames reflected off the woman’s silver hair and cast dancing shadows on the grey, windowless walls. Though spacious, the chamber managed a strange intimacy, like one might imagine within the drawing room of a fortress.
Behind Eileen, the door latched itself shut with a soft, almost sentient click.
“Where’s the Lord Chancellor?” Eileen asked, frowning. This was, after all, the very man’s Council office, and he had written the letter requesting the meeting.
“Brodie won’t be joining us. Off on urgent business,” Caldwell answered, setting her teacup neatly into its saucer on the mantelpiece, beside a pot of English ivy trailing dark green vines.
A small disappointment rolled through Eileen as Caldwell crossed the stone floor to pull her into a stiff embrace.
“He may well be,” she said into Caldwell’s shoulder, “but is he happy with us being in here? Without him?”
The Council governed every Weaver in Britain and Ireland from the shadows. Its Lord Chancellor—Domhnall Brodie—was part fixer, part statesman, and full-time guardian of their secrets. Needless to say, entry to his office was by invitation only.
“He doesn’t have a choice,” Caldwell answered. “I’m using it.”
She released Eileen with a pat and approached the pedestal desk. Caldwell lowered herself into Brodie’s chair as a victor claiming new territory, then flitted her hand towards an armchair opposite.
“We haven’t got all morning,” Caldwell added.
The fire popped, in approval or perhaps complaint. Either way, the office seemed to know who ruled it that day.
Eileen sat. Even nine years out of school—nine years out from under Caldwell’s supervision—she felt compelled to heed the professor’s directions.
Caldwell perched her elbows on the desk and steepled her fingers. Her gold ring glinted in the firelight. It sat tight under the bulge of her knuckle, as though it had grown there and would not be coaxed off. The sight of it drew Eileen’s eyes to her own Weaver ring.
“What has he told you about this meeting?” Caldwell asked.
“Very little,” Eileen said, her eyes still cast down, aimed at where her fingers fiddled with the edge of her wool skirt. “Well, practically nothing.”
“Kept you in the dark, has he?” Caldwell’s lips curled. “Disappointing, but not surprising.” She dropped her hands and rifled through the papers on Brodie’s desk, then plucked what looked to be a half-written letter from a stack, tore it, and selected a fountain pen from a gold chalice. “It also complicates what comes next,” she added, spinning the pen between her fingers.
“I’m sure I can follow.”
“Aye, so I’m told.”
Eileen felt cornered, rather than flattered.
“How are things with your government work, by the way?” Caldwell didn’t converse in straight lines. She spoke in digressions, each comment a probe for weakness, each question another cannon loaded for the broadside.
“Things are grand.” Eileen tried to sound firm. The wobble in her voice betrayed her.
“Really? Is it true Andrews was just promoted to Archives Provost?” Caldwell’s tone lifted with mock surprise.
Eileen didn’t respond. She had nothing to add.
The headmistress continued, “He was such a terrible student, that one. Unlike you.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and leaned back.
Caldwell didn’t need to shout for dominance. She simply assumed it, and the conversation arranged itself around her. Weavers were trained to believe control was the highest virtue, and Caldwell was absolutely dripping in it.
“Are you asking me why I was passed up for the position?” Eileen planted her feet, hoping to dispel the sting that she was surprised returned so quickly.
“If I wanted to know that I’d ask the promotions committee. I want to know why Brodie selected you for this particular assignment.”
“By that logic, you should ask him.”
“As we’ve established, he’s not here.” Caldwell jotted down a phrase, then stilled her pen. “Brodie wants you to help at Dunroven Academy.”
The waves of anxiety rose. Every word from Caldwell churned the waters, and Eileen was too far from shore to know which way to swim.
“Help with what?”
Caldwell lifted her hand and waited. Steadily, silently, her cup and saucer floated from the mantelpiece. She plucked it from the air as she answered.
“We are a school. Teaching would be the natural assumption.”
Of course Brodie would send Eileen away; why confront a thing when you can relocate it? He was filing her somewhere out of the way.
Caldwell tipped the teacup, quickly finishing the rest of her drink. “How silly of me. Would you like tea?”
Eileen hadn’t had time for more than a sip that morning, thanks to the half hour she’d spent standing before her wardrobe deciding what to wear.
“That would be nice.”
Caldwell gave a curt two-finger salute towards the tea tray in the corner. The suggestion was clear enough. Eileen rose from the desk to pour herself tea, adding sugar and milk, all the while thinking about how the devil she knew at least had a familiar desk and predictable hours.
By the time she returned to her seat, Caldwell had packed most of the torn paper with stately script.
“He is sending you to Dunroven for the year to co-teach Protective Energetics.”
Eileen’s heart pounded as she thought of lessons in elemental shields and duelling. The subject of Protective Energetics was by no measure her strength—neither as a student nor as an adult.
“There must be a mistake.”
“Evidently not.”
A flush crept up Eileen’s neck. Brodie’s absence, which had seemed incidental a moment before, now looked horribly like foresight. “Well… I’m hardly qualified.”
Caldwell’s eyes remained fixed on her writing. “That is neither here nor there. Autumn term starts the day after tomorrow and I need someone immediately. Congratulations, Professor.”
“What happened to the previous teacher?”
Caldwell raised her stony gaze. “Unfit to continue.”
“Were they cursed by the Gold King?” Eileen hoped, despite the riskiness of her joke, to make Caldwell laugh and maybe delay the spiral of bad news; Scottish Weavers of a certain age loved to blame the fictitious royal for even the most minor of inconveniences.
Caldwell’s eyes only narrowed. “What do you know about the Gold King?”
Eileen had just spent three weeks organising the Council’s collection of tales and fables. She was familiar with the legend. “It’s a story to scare children,” she said, shrugging.
Eileen could have sworn she heard a tut before Caldwell muttered, “Precisely.”
The headmistress attempted to sip again from her cup but found it empty. It didn’t stay that way for long. With a point of her finger, a jet of hot tea shot from the teapot on the tray in the corner through the air and into her cup.
Most Weavers would have brought the teapot to their cup, whether by magic or walking, as Eileen had done. With Caldwell’s talent for water weaving, it was, in fact, easier for her to bring the scalding tea across the room to her.
“This isn’t exactly fair. I’ve already got a job and it’s here.” Eileen pointed downwards, in the general direction of the Records and Archives office. “Besides, it’s rather short notice for preparing a curriculum.”
“Take the former up with the Lord Chancellor. As for the latter, you Irish always land on your feet somehow, so that’s what I’m counting on.” Caldwell winked. “I did mention you’d be co-teaching. Your new colleague has already made his lesson plans.”
Eileen dug her fingernails into the soft skin of her palm, just deep enough to stay anchored. “Then why doesn’t he teach the course himself?” Her ring warmed on her finger, and the inscribed words seemed to stamp into her skin, mocking her.
“Public opinion,” Caldwell replied.
“He’s unpopular?”
“If anyone would understand that it’s you.”
A tendril of green surged across the desk—a vine of the English ivy from the pot on the mantelpiece. It darted at Caldwell’s teacup, aiming for the handle like a snake about to strike. Caldwell reflexively smacked her palm down on the tabletop, and the ivy slithered away, chastised.
“Oh, don’t be so sensitive, Miss Binchy.”
Eileen shouldn’t have let that happen. She herself had been educated for nearly a decade at Dunroven Academy of Magic, where she’d trained hard to prevent such slips.
Eileen brought her own cup to her lips, hiding her face. She investigated the far wall of the office, avoiding Caldwell’s judgemental eyes. There, a stack of leather-bound books sat perfectly squared on the floor. Trust Brodie to be both meticulous and mildly disrespectful. Too orderly to leave the Council’s holdings strewn about, but not enough to keep them off the floor.
Caldwell let out a deep breath. “Though the other person I’ve hired is qualified to teach the material… I expect hesitation among the parents. Some good old-fashioned Council presence in the classroom should ease concerns.”
A cold wave of panic nearly pulled Eileen under completely. This isn’t a personality issue, Eileen realised. It was a political one. Which led her to an uneasy hypothesis. “You hired a Bleeder?”
It was a controversial choice. Dangerous, even. The Bleeders had tried to drag magic into a fight that wasn’t theirs and, a decade later, the few who’d survived were apparently forcing their way into places they didn’t belong. Like Dunroven. Again.
“Someone as quick as you, Miss Binchy, really should have been promoted by now.”
Before Eileen could retort that someone as old as Caldwell really should have been retired, a tap at the door interrupted. The Lord Chancellor’s assistant, Astrid Hummel, entered, saving Eileen from her own impulsivity.
“Headmistress,” Astrid greeted with a voice as polished as her posture. “Justice Gordon is ready for you.”
Eileen blinked. The Justice Department’s work was largely corporate in practice, full of contracts and compliance, as well as administering how Weavers were permitted to move—and make money—among Flatlanders. She couldn’t imagine what Caldwell wanted with him.
“Send him in,” the headmistress answered.
“Justice Gordon has his own office on the fifth floor. If you follow me, I—”
“I’ll hold the meeting here.”
“But this is Domhnall’s office,” Astrid blurted. She was a rare member of the Council to refer to the Lord Chancellor by his first name.
“I’ll happily vacate it upon his return. Now, send Gordon in. If you would be so kind, please also fetch Miss Binchy’s train ticket.”
Caldwell turned back to her notes, skimming the paper before her. Satisfied, she thrust it forwards at Eileen. “You’ve been in Records and Archives too long. Let them see you do something bold. Unless you want to be overlooked again next year?”
That word… overlooked. It wasn’t a blight, not exactly. But it had followed Eileen for years, clinging to her like foxing on an old book. It seemed to have passed from diagnosis to easy insult.
Eileen’s teacup shook, but her free hand was steady enough as she accepted the paper. It carried a list of terse instructions, including an early train she was to take from Edinburgh Waverley railway station the next day.
Astrid showed Eileen out into the antechamber. In a daze, Eileen traded her rattling teacup for the ticket in question, before drifting into a bustling atrium. The air hummed with footsteps and chatter. Above, a ceiling painted dark blue stretched high. Gold stars dotted it and caught the glint of gas lamps along the curved wall. The painted sky was a poor substitute but, down there, it was all they had.
The Council offices lay entirely underground as a hidden lattice beneath Edinburgh. Weavers’ pubs and schools—like Dunroven Academy—remained buried, too, even as more of their kind increasingly took flats and townhouses above ground, next to Flatlander neighbours.
Eileen dodged a rolling tea cart and wove through the crowd of arriving Council employees. A line of clerks cut her off. They carried bundles of files stacked so high they threatened to topple. Cigarette smoke curled among the throng, adding to the morning stink of perfume and aftershave.
At the far side of the lobby, Eileen adjusted her stride to avoid where the stone dipped underfoot, and brick inserts sat loose. The gallows had once stood on that exact rectangle and, while the structure was long gone, the floor clearly remembered.
Past the relic of the gallows, two arched doorways sat side by side. Eileen took the left, leaving the narrower arch to the old holding cells—now mostly used for storage—unvisited as she descended to the lower depths of the subterranean offices. Few ventured down either path, most preferring their freedom, and to send their book requests via intra-office post.
On the way down, she passed the Publishing Department’s office. Eileen’s own team dealt in that which was fixed and finished: memos, transcripts, tomes, the blunt reports of what had already happened. But, slightly above them, the publishers handled analysis and interpretation, the shaping of events into a pattern that could be read with sense. Each week their work descended to the Archives to be bound and shelved, and Eileen felt the familiar mix of awe and resentment. They made history; she alphabetised it. Even that was being taken from her now.
The floor sloped steeper beneath her feet, twisting and narrowing as it burrowed deeper. Minutes passed before Eileen reached the heavy door of the Records and Archives office. She pushed it open and, for the second time that morning, was startled by who she found waiting for her on the other side.
Spinning Silver meets Harry Potter in The Gold Keepers. When Eileen Binchy is suddenly pulled from her job as an archivist so she can be a teacher at her old school, she is shocked. A Weaver, Eileen spent many years at Dunroven Academy learning how to use and control her magic. Now, post-war Scotland is brimming with new tensions, and things only get more complicated when she learns Calum Markaine, a former classmate and a member of the infamous Bleeders is to be her co-teacher. Known for being responsible for a reprehensible attack during the war, Eileen’s hackles are immediately raised. How could someone with such heinous past crimes be allowed to teach? Not long after term starts, Eileen starts to surmise that Calum was not present at the academy merely for teaching. He is searching for something. When he reveals the secret, suddenly Eileen is thrust into a dangerous treasure hunt across time for special relics needed to summon a powerful force. As she and Calum are forced to work together, she is forced also to question what she thought was the truth. Is Calum truly an enemy she needs to stop? Or could he possibly be the only person she should trust?
The Gold Keepers is a riveting historical fantasy that is unique in subject matter, rife with mystery and topped off with a taste of slow-burn romance. One of my favorite fantasy tropes is books that build their foundation off of a children's story – even one that is made up specifically for the book itself. So many folk and fairy tales are rooted in deeper history or mystery than we realize as kids. The darkness hidden behind mythical creatures, magical objects and monsters often reflect a very real darkness happening in the real world around us. The experience thus becomes universal. No matter how old a reader gets, there will always be something exciting about encountering a possible villain that was thought to only live within the pages of a book, but in fact holds a profound influence. As children, we conquered those villains in our dreams and fantasies. Now, we continue to conquer those same villains, they might just be wearing different costumes as they hide in plain sight in the real world.
The world building in The Gold Keepers is rich with detail, and the magic system is familiar, yet wholly original. I also liked that this magic-school fantasy favored pupils as old as their early twenties. It helped bring the maturity level up and opened the book up to a wider audience. As for the prose, it is spellbinding and threaded with just enough suspense that readers make sure to take their time but still are always at the edge of their seat wondering just what secret is about to be revealed next. As a protagonist, Eileen provides a lens through which readers can view one of the overarching themes of not only this particular book, but of society in general: sometimes the good guys are not always who we think they are.
The Gold Keepers is a home run for fantasy lovers, and I cannot wait for the next two books in the trilogy. I expect big things from Elizabeth Falkenberg in the future.