The Light Ages

by Ian R. MacLeod

  ‘You can’t do this,’ I said.

  ‘Why not?’ Sadie fanned her fingers up through the creature’s dense black mane. He nudged his nose against her. ‘Can’t you hear those balehounds? How long do you imagine Star can last here? I’d rather he just went—and took my Anna with him—before I change my mind.’

  She opened the adjoining stable and the russet unicorn which had been her gift to Greatmaster Porrett whinnied and clopped out.

  ‘He seems like a good beast. And he’d be wasted here-always would have been, even if I had got married. So you might as well take him, Robbie.’ Walking between the two great unicorns, Sadie led them towards a stone mounting block. ‘Come on …’

  I held the creature’s mane, and Sadie paused and gave Anna a wordless hug, then helped her up. Then it was my turn. It seemed ridiculously high up there, but at least the unicorn’s back was broad. Sadie looked up at us—or rather, she gazed at Anna.

  ‘Where will you go?’

  Anna shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘We need to get back to London,’ I said, swaying and gripping the unicorn’s mane. ‘And I doubt if there’ll be trains. What about you, Sadie?’

  ‘What do you expect me to do? I’ll stay here. I owe it to this house, my father and my poor mother, to my guild …’

  ‘It won’t be like that now.’

  Sadie didn’t bother to answer. ‘These creatures, they’ll go faster if you heel them, slower if you pull on their manes. Left and right’s the same—but not as hard as you’re doing, Robbie—so treat them with respect, and, above all, take care of Anna. Otherwise, I’ll come after you. And have this …’ She pressed several balled-up notes into my hand. ‘You’ll need money, if it’s still worth anything.’

  I looked at Anna. ‘Are you ready?’

  She nodded.

  I was about to get my creature moving when Sadie tugged it back.

  ‘My whisperjewel,’ she said. ‘I need it back to protect this house ..

  In my pocket, I felt a surge of light, the lost music of all those endless dances. With an effort, I tossed it down to her, gleaming wyreblack. Sadie caught it. She slapped the creatures’ rears and we trotted from the stables.

  ‘Go for the main gates! Take Marine Drive!’

  But when I looked back she had already gone from sight. And she was right about these marvellous creatures; they were far from stupid. Sensing my inexperience and Anna’s weariness, they slowed to a smooth walk across the snowy morning gardens, their horned heads nodding, their warm scent and breath wafting back over us, their heavy hooves crashing through the crusted snow.

  VII

  MARINE DRIVE WAS EMPTY and the loudest sound in the town of Saltfleetby came from the tide sluicing in under the pillars of the pier. The shops on the main street, which in the summer would have spilled out in carousels selling rock, postcards, novelties, buckets and spades, were shut and boarded. But, here in winter, they were probably always that way. Had the world changed? Was this the New Age? But I was cold, and Anna’s lips were blue and she was shivering, and we needed warmer clothes. I found a shop with the golden scissors of the Outfitters’ Guild dangling above it, clumsily dismounted and banged hard on the door until a man’s face, sleepy and wary, finally peered at us through the glass.

  ‘Do you know what time this is?’ He asked reassuringly simple questions as he pulled back the bolts. He glanced up at Anna and our mounts. ‘I wouldn’t stay long around here if I were you—you know what things are like.’

  ‘What are they like?’

  But already he was lumbering back into the rails of his shop. He found us cloaks and warm tops, riding trousers for Anna and boots for us both. He studied one of Sadie’s twenty pound notes. ‘Don’t you have anything else?’

  ‘Don’t worry about the change.’

  ‘No … ?’ He laughed. ‘But I’ll take it. Maybe I can frame the bloody thing, show it to the kids …’

  The telegraphs, I noticed, as we rode on out of the town, were black, but not wyreblack; they were simply dead.

  The sun vanished. Dense white mist set in. The unicorns were slow, awkward mounts; they’d been designed for the brief speed of the chase. My legs were chafed, my back and buttocks ached, and Anna took to leaning across Starlight’s neck.

  A boy ran up to us through the dim hedges. The unicorns started, but were too tired to rear.

  ‘Did you see it? Did you see it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The dragon! It was over there in that field.’ He pointed, his eyes alight with wonder. But all I could see was mist.

  We stopped at a stables and farrier above the North Downs on the first night of our journey towards London. The stableman shook his head at the state of our mounts. What we needed were saddles. Just had to widen the girth. And no, he didn’t want our money—that stuff was for wiping your arse now. And we could sleep for free in the roofspace above the straw. That night, less asleep than unconscious from weariness, I was sure I smelled smoke, and heard shouts and screams. And the unicorns, and the other beasts in the stable below us, seemed restless. I moved closer towards Anna, but she was light and still, scarcely there. And then I was gone, too, drawn back into the blackness, although I could still hear the beasts below whinnying, snickering, an agitated panting, then the churn of a saw, until I woke up to find myself and Anna covered in dust and frost.

  Down in the muddy yard, our mounts were already saddled. Starlight was trying to bite the hand of the stablelad who held him and there were wheals across his flanks. They’d tried a bridle, apparently, which the beasts wouldn’t take. Greatmaster Porrett’s russet gift was shivering and steaming as if he’d already been ridden a dozen hard miles. His forehead was a bleeding stump.

  ‘They’re just horses, you know.’ The stableman was as bland and casual as he had been yesterday. ‘The damn things fall off.’ He fixed us with a smile and a glare.

  The mist was thicker still on the second day of our journey, laden with the smell of burning, and we caught glimpses of flames and wreckage. Still, no one knew quite what was happening up in London, other than that the trains weren’t running and the telegraphs were dead. The saddles were some help in keeping upright, but my mount’s shivering increased as the morning progressed and blood wouldn’t stop flowing from the stub on his forehead. It dripped in the mud and splashed back across me. The unicorn was in pain, half-blinded. I tried getting off and leading him, but in the late afternoon the creature stopped in his tracks, belched a torrent of bile, then keeled over and died. We had to leave him where he fell; it wasn’t the first carcass we’d seen at the roadside.

  I walked. Anna rode. We camped out for our second night in the darkness at the edge of a field. There were no lights, and the only sound came from the snow’s dripping. Finally succeeding in undoing the complex fittings of Starlight’s saddle, I left the beast to rummage. Then I found some sticks and made a drier patch of stones, and tried to light it with a flintbox.

  ‘Let me.’ Anna leaned from the huddle of her cloak. She said something, then something else again. The cheap little box, scarcely even aethered, still ticked uselessly. After half an hour of muttering, breathing, she caused the fire to burn, but it hollowed her face terribly, gave off little heat, and the flames danced madly through the branches, telling the whole world exactly where we were. I was almost grateful when it went out.

  I leaned against Anna as she lay under a tree. We were both wet. I could feel the shivering grind of her teeth.

  ‘Do you really think this is the New Age?’

  ‘We’ve got to get to London.’

  She chuckled, then coughed. ‘Why will London be any different?’

  A last ember flickered across a twig.

  ‘Can’t you get a bit closer?’ I asked. ‘A bit warmer?’

  ‘I am close.’

  But she wasn’t.

  The night poured around us as the snow ticked and melted, and somewhere, clear but distant, like the passing of
a train beyond the horizon, I was sure I heard the beating of giant wings.

  What is it that you really want, Robbie? Sadie was right when she said it wasn’t me …

  But that night in Bracebridge, Anna, when you let me lie with my hand against your cheek.

  I was asleep. I don’t even remember. And what now?

  I still don’t know.

  There was mist again in the morning. But it was thinner, and the ice hanging from the branches had refrozen into beautiful jewels. The huge black shape of the unicorn came edging through the sparkling trails, its horn glistening. Anna was still asleep, her face cupped in her hands, seemingly tranquil …

  What is it that you really want, Robbie?

  I could still hear her voice, edging in through my dreams. For a long time, as the world sparkled the unicorn stood as her guardian, I left Anna sleeping.

  Another morning. A gathering smell of rot and smoke.

  The Thames was still frozen. Blurred by hunger and tiredness, we’d gone too far east, scarcely brushing London’s southern outskirts. Had children really scampered beside us chanting that Anna was Goldenwhite, that she’d come again riding a unicorn to rescue the city? I didn’t know. Starlight was suffering, and the straps of the girth—although I doubted if Anna could have ridden this far without a saddle—had bitten into his flesh. I helped her down. There was the steep slope to the river. The ice looked solid enough, but it had a watery sheen. It might take us, but it probably wouldn’t accept the unicorn’s huge weight. I hacked off the buckles and shooed Starlight into the fog.

  VIII

  LONDON, LONDON, CITY OF ALL MY HOPES, was more dangerous than ever at the start of this New Age. As Anna and I entered the smoke edges of the Easterlies, the sights we had seen on the way were soon dimmed. True, and as far I as could get the story, the great advance towards Northcentral on Christmas night had succeeded, or at least it hadn’t failed. Yes, citizen, all the guildgates are open and the houses of the filthy rich are there for the plundering if that’s your fancy—those, that is, which haven’t burned to the ground. Children were parading with top hats and silk-lined coats, and a wild, chattering chorus of familiars had been released around Caris Yard, much to the irritation of the few citizens who still inhabited it. Flock curtains and fine enamel snuffboxes and great golden sea-beasts of pillaged furniture could be yours for two-a-penny, except that nobody would have wanted your penny in the first place, but food—water, even, now that the pumping houses had stopped working and half-frozen sewage was backing up through the grids of the drains—was in short supply.

  Anna and I wandered slowly through the mist beside the dead tramtracks along the middle of Doxy Street. Bodies hung from lampposts and there were grey scraps of carrion in the gutters over which the kingrats, grown bigger and bolder than ever, were squealing. Doors hung open, shattered windows spilled their contents. Everywhere, too common to be noticed, was the reek of smoke and shit, and the sound of people weeping. Here, a telegraph was still glowing, although its line was broken, and a boy of apprentice age was standing barefoot in the frost and gripping it as it writhed and glowed, chanting the lost messages of his guild. Horses and drays ran wild, hungry as the citizens who were trying to capture them. I was glad we’d released Starlight on the far side of the Thames. Along with the familiars of Caris Yard, many stranger creatures had escaped into the city. The western flow of Doxy Street was interrupted by a great steaming pit and the crowd who were standing around it. Down below, burying its way in or out of the earth, was a saw-toothed pitbeast far bigger than I had ever seen. And St Blate’s had been opened—have you tried riding a troll, citizen? But they were all gone now, cast and scattered, lost for many days …

  There was much sport and there was much madness at the start of this unnamed Age. Dragonlice in the churches. Cuckoo-weed growing from the untended factories. Some children invading Thripp Sidings had managed to get one of the big locomotives going. But they didn’t have the right spells and the engine had exploded, killing and maiming dozens in a giant blast of superheated steam. So many sights, so many stories.

  I could guess even then that the histories would tell of these days quite differently. And there were gatherings and debates in the lesser guildhouses. There was talk of liberty. Many people striving to get the city going. A guild training might still be acknowledged as a skill, as long as you were prepared to work like everyone else and not flaunt it. And wealth—wealth was like poverty, really; a burden to be cast off in exchange for the common rights of citizenship. And the shiftdays—they might still be changed. I was amused to hear such talk wafting out from a needle factory in Houndsfleet. And there was kindness as well, amid the madness, in those first days. But it was the madness which predominated. Armies of the citizen-helpers were still roving the streets with their clubs and guns.

  I was wary of mentioning Saul’s name, or Blissenhawk’s. London was plainly at war with itself and I had no desire to draw attention to myself and Anna. Many of the major streets were blocked by barricades and the lads—ne’er-do-wells of the sort Saul and I had both been when I first arrived in this city—had set themselves up as guardians. They had no use for what was left of Sadie’s money, but still required payment before they let you pass.

  ‘What guild were you in?’ I was asked after I’d handed over my cloak.

  ‘Does that matter now?’ I didn’t like the way he was looking at Anna. Even with her hood up, she looked odd and frail. ‘Just asking. You don’t look like a mart. And neither does she.’

  ‘Well, we both were. And we’re all citizens now, aren’t we?’

  An unpillaged pub cellar, probably the only one left now in all of London, had been discovered just across the way and the first barrel was being hoisted out. Then the ropes broke and the thing shattered into staves, spewing beer across the pavement. One of the lads was suddenly weeping, holding his arm the wrong way.

  ‘I heard Citizen Saul was up this way …’ I muttered, nodding towards Northcentral.

  ‘Oh, him.’ Our young citizen was distracted, unimpressed. ‘It’s the opposite way entirely. You’ll need to go up Tidesmeet …’

  We were lucky that one of the men who picked up Anna and I at the docklands gates had once been a fellow seller of the New Dawn. Two of the citizens he was with were struggling to control a captured balehound with a tangle of chains. Another was carrying one of Saul’s guns, and was missing a hand. They looked comical and dangerous, although I knew not to smile, and they chatted with me and Anna in a weary, disconnected way as they led us towards the looming bulk of Dockland Exchange. Saltfleetby, eh? Why, Stan here has a brother who’s been that way … No story you could tell at that time would have been too mundane, or too bizarre, not to be believed.

  The fog, thickened by the smoke and the nearness of the river, hung heavier here. The silent buildings Saul and I had once scampered between through the bustle of my first summer, that tea-scented warehouse, came and went in the murk. There were the same bad smells here as everywhere, but they grew more intense as we finally reached the thick circular base of the great Exchange. The balehound, and others jammed nearby in makeshift pens, roared and howled. There was a charnel house reek, and a grey mass of gulls seethed beneath the building, screaming and flapping. My feet slipped and crackled through bones and slurry. Then there were endless stairs curving upwards because no one had yet got the machines which drove the lifts working. My legs were aching, and Anna was wearying. There were glimpses of deserted offices, unattended hafts, the stilled insect mouths of typewriters; all the lost bustle of a great guild.

  Finally, we reached the upper levels, which the architect, unable to resist some last flurry of his skills, had broadened out and filled with glass so that the building swarmed with grey wintry light. A final run of stairs and we were amid wood panelling and smooth grey carpets which extended from the windows like tendrils of fog. Then to the room, the office, which Saul now inhabited. The doors to a balcony were open and he was stand
ing out on it. The air was hazed. He turned when we were announced.

  ‘You’re back!’

  I was relieved to discover that he seemed pleased to see me and Anna. And his manner of dress, the fact that he’d found a decent suit, and beneath it a waistcoat even brighter than any of his usual outfits, was reassuring as well. He almost seemed like the same old Saul.

  ‘You both look exhausted. Sit down …’

  We did, although the leather chairs were slippery with condensation from the fog. The whole room, in fact, as Saul congratulated us on getting here and doing whatever the hell it was that we’d done—as he put it—at Walcote House, had a cold, wet sheen. It seemed to grow and subside within the mist which plumed in from the balcony as Saul told us about Christmas night in London, shaking his head as he did so like an old man amazed at some distant memory. There had been many casualties and things were still difficult now, but it really had gone as well as anyone could have expected. There had been resistance, yes, but the guns had worked, and many of the troops and guards had changed sides, become citizens, vanished. Northcentral’s key points and great guildhalls had collapsed with surprisingly little struggle. Like pushing at an open door. Some rich bankers along Threadneedle Street had even committed suicide before the citizens got near them.

  ‘It really was quite a sight. Have you been up Northcentral yet?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well, you should. And Goldsmiths’ Hall—didn’t you say something about bringing down the building without damaging a single stone? Well, fact is, one whole side of it’s caved in—happened at about noon on the first morning. You really must go and see, Robbie—Anna as well, of course ..

  Saul had taken possession of the room’s wide cedarstone desk in the sense that he’d laid a few pens on it and done some doodles of what looked like trees on a notepad, but, as he eased himself behind it and swivelled on the chair and continued talking of what an ideal base this was, necessary for command and easily defensible, the impression was of a schoolboy holding court behind teacher’s desk. I found myself glancing towards the double doors as if Greatgrandmaster Passington might still drift through them at any moment like a darker, more certain gathering of the fog. I picked up a brass frame and ran my hand across the glass to clear the dew. Sadie looked amazingly young and happy and glamorous in the posed photographic print. The dress could have been the one she wore on that distant Midsummer.