The House of Storms

by Ian R. MacLeod

  She fled back through the weathertop and towards the house. Whatever would happen in this coming encirclement, she was certain the people here would look to her to guide them. But she had no idea what to do—not the faintest. Consulting Ralph with his illness and confused allegiances seemed laughable, but nevertheless she was heading in search of him across the inner hall when the bell above the telephone booth beneath the best stairs suddenly began to ring.

  Breathless, disbelieving, still trailing the grubby threads of her old coat, Marion stopped and turned. Much as she disliked these devices, she knew it was her responsibility to answer whoever was calling Invercombe. She opened the door of the booth and sat down.

  ‘Marion. I thought I might find you here.’

  Unmistakably beautiful, entirely unchanged, Alice Meynell smiled at her from the mirror’s far side.

  XVI

  THE CENTRE OF THE EYE was an infinite falling, but it was a journey Alice no longer feared. There were stars inside that swirling blackness. There were empires of light.

  To get to this place of final understanding had been the work of a lifetime. She saw that now as well. Her parents aboard that yacht had been sailing towards it even as they drowned. So had her aunt as she squirmed beneath the grey waters beside the falls of that ghastly house. The journey had continued in Lichfield, and walking Stow Pool with Cheryl Kettlethorpe, and in the smell of gas and damp and cats in the hovel they’d lived in, and the many guildsmen their thighs had enclosed. Then Dudley and pianos and the boredoms of parasoled Noshiftday afternoons in the castle grounds. And on to London, and the dream still unfinished, and Silus a staging post, just as Tom had finally turned out to be. Yes, even when she’d arrived as a greatgrandmistress, she’d still been travelling, and life and time had streamed past her, eroding flesh and bone—hope, even—yet leaving the vital truth, which was the journey itself, untouched. It had continued with Ralph, as well, in railway carriages which rocked endlessly into the feverish night, and his drowning gaze which she had always feared to meet, yet now she saw was just another part of the tunnel down which lay all knowledge.

  And now she had reached the place which was known as Einfell, and nothing was behind her now, and everything waited ahead in Invercombe’s falling dark. The matter of turning this winter campaign to her own will had been, even by the standards of her own machinations, an extraordinary task. She had called in debts, threats, liaisons which had lain dormant for so long that their holders had perhaps imagined they would never be brought to account. She had cajoled and argued for a fresh advance across the shining map which High Command in London tended, and then for it to be performed with a swiftness which went against all the rules of planning which they so worshipped. But that was the whole point, that was the whole purpose. This war would otherwise become an endless deathly dance. That was what she had had to make them see.

  Alice knew she had only been partially successful. Yes, there had been consent to a diversionary advance. Indeed, she had been congratulated on the swiftness of her battalion’s movements, which, just as she’d predicted, had taken the West entirely by surprise. But her orders and authorisations had been somewhat at variance to the actions she had finally performed, and that variance had expanded to a point where it could no longer be ignored. Alice had diverted far more of the East’s resources towards this manoeuvre than had ever been approved, and had then failed to report back or secure supply lines to such an extent that even the grudging support she had once received from London was retracted. Of course, if she succeeded in reaching the channel and turning upstream towards Bristol she would be acclaimed as the Angel of the East. But Alice knew as well as the greatgrandmasters back in London that important practicalities had been neglected, and dubious deaths had occurred, and that her time, as the armies of the West finally wheeled themselves to face her in far greater numbers, was running out. But a military assault was the last thing she planned.

  Everything had come together in these last few shifterms. Recently, she had submitted herself to the pull of the telephone’s mirror with a recklessness which she had long denied herself. Even as her forces surged madly south and west, she had poured through the blackness at the core of her own eyes and ridden with the aether, soared on the light and the dark. She saw, just as a hawk must see the landscape of its hunting ground, how all the conflicts and confusions of Europe and Thule had tightened into the particularities of English hopes and prejudices, and then knotted into war. Threads of it coiled like angry veins across the whole country, but ahead was the core, a heart, an ever-widening pupil, a nexus, waiting for her within Invercombe’s stormy pillars of cloud.

  She knew that the men who still executed her orders were close to mutiny. Only the fact that they were bound irresistibly to her by the wild onrush of this advance had led them this far. That, and the dumb respect for title and hierarchy which even now infused everything about the guilds. Alice, in recent shifterms, had insisted on conducting all serious business through the telephone so as to avoid the bother of meeting face to face. What, after all, was vision, but a random play of assumptions, lies and light? Only she saw the real truth, and that lay far inside the mirror, beyond the falling depths of her eyes.

  Admittedly, Einfell’s desertion had come as a slight disappointment, for she’d looked forward to re-encountering those pale lost shapes which Silus had once called the Shadow Ones, and with whom she now felt she shared some kind of identity. But, on second consideration, it all made sense, for her forces had recently been moving in the wake of some ragged procession, and the evidence of their passing lay here in smell of smoke and ordure, in the burned and ransacked buildings, and in MARION scrawled upon the walls. They, too, had moved on. For them, just as for her, this pale ruin of Einfell had only ever been a staging post. Invercombe always was the goal.

  Dressed in the hooded cape she now affected, dragging the ageing bones which she soon planned to depart, Alice reached a clearing in the woods where many arrangements and orderings already seemed entirely satisfactory to her, although the wary men who followed her with their guns affected puzzlement and shock. Here, even, was a mound of new earth, which she had had dug up. Something in the slippery remains within their shroud of seething insects—a trace of identity or memory-had nagged at her. But no matter, for, having brought her own personal portable telephone booth with her this far—having, indeed, insisted on the protection and maintenance of a maximum bandwidth line back towards the East whilst arrangements for mere food and munitions lay in disorder—she now had a far more satisfactory alternative.

  She remembered this small brick building from her previous visit to these woods in Einfell, and she had her tent and quarters erected over and beside it, and some dinner plates which she’d discovered nearby laid decoratively across the bare earth. Once finally established and alone and freed of the bother of acting the greatgrandmistress, she set her gramophone playing in the lovely swish of an out-groove. Dancing to the lit air’s movements, inspecting and rearranging the burnt and bird-like corpses which scattered her enclave, she then set about the relatively simple business of re-energising the booth. The connection of this ancient station ran only to one place, but as the sappers and telegraphers unwound and restrung cables back towards the East, that would soon be corrected. And Invercombe, to begin with, was more than enough.

  All Alice felt as the mirror finally cleared was a wondering sadness that she had ever troubled about how she appeared. Shrugging off her hood, wiping off what remained of her make-up with the balled-up fabric of her gloves, she regarded herself more closely. Haggard. Lividly pale. More like the dead, earthy thing they had recently dug up than the Alice Meynell of old. With a slight relaxing of some inner nerve, which was something she now could will and unwill with near total control, she could now actually see entirely through herself. She glanced towards her battered portmanteau and smiled. Too long, indeed, she had toyed with creams and potions and worries about the line of her chin. A mere effort of
her undying will, and she could remake herself without all the bothersome practicalities of her notebook. Even as she studied herself, the strung, translucent flesh she saw in the mirror grew creamily smooth. Her near-lipless mouth plumped, softened, reddened, then parted in a slight smile over perfect teeth and a wetly playful hint of tongue. Cheekbones to die for. Jawline like the wings of a swan. Hair neither gold nor silver but that endlessly refined metal which the alchemists had long sought. She lowered the cloak further. She smiled as her hands touched the shining divide between her perfect breasts. Yes, she was Alice, Alice Meynell, even if all beauty was an illusion. She was the crackle of a gramophone and she was the song of a dying lover’s sigh, and her eyes, in their dark core at the heart of her beauty, had never, ever changed. She fell through them. On into the blackness, and beyond.

  Ah, Invercombe. Yes, Invercombe. Amazing, indeed, how beautifully perfect everything remained. The chimneys, the trees, the windows, the grounds. This place, in its power and mystery, had always called to her, but she, foolish Ulysses tied to the mast of her greatgrandmistress’s duties, had for too long ignored its siren song. She had summoned the Falling from here, certainly, but she had remained far away for too long, over-fearful of the dullards who surrounded her.

  She followed. She watched and waited. She made discoveries of things she had long known. With a flurry of sadness and relief, she saw, working amid the whispering pages of the library, the hunched and haggard creature her poor son had become. Just as she’d suspected. Ralph had been amongst the ragged band who had headed towards Invercombe before her. She sensed, as well, in stray flickers of light and song, the whispering passage of the Shadow Ones, who had been drawn to Invercombe for reasons far closer to her own. Outside as the sun flared and sank, a bonfire hung tremulous. The figures which murmured around it were far wilder and more dangerous-looking than those which cleaned and cooked inside. Some, indeed, were not human at all. But one especially caught Alice’s eye as she swirled amid the uncoiling smoke. Something about his face … Something of way he held himself… It was—could only be. Alice, an angel of flame towards whom several of those gathered and chanting around the fire were now gazing, smiled. For here was the child Ralph had sired with that shoregirl. Then the wind surged through the fire, and she blew away in a laugh of leaves. Hovering higher, she saw another figure moving through the waving pines towards the weathertop in the light’s last glow with a stooped and purposeful gait.

  Odd, really, how the shoregirl she’d always imagined as some greater or lesser rival would soon become her most vital ally in the work ahead. But not so very odd. There were a million ways in which Alice could have destroyed Marion Price. But she had always held back. Call it instinct, destiny. Whatever and however, Alice watched her now as she stood on the weathertop’s gantry. Even with that badly cut, grey-threaded hair and that filthy coat, there was something about her—the way she looked, moved. Some females, Alice had often thought, observed, attained a second and far higher level of beauty after the first easy victories of youth when character and the demands of life had imprinted themselves. It was far more than mere good looks, and Marion Price possessed it now. Forget about advances in the administration of medicine—that was why people followed and so adored her. And she didn’t even realise, or care. Yet that was part of her loveliness as well…

  It was some trick, Alice conceded with grudging admiration, to have played upon the world. Look at me, but don’t look. Follow, but don’t follow. A tightrope walk, indeed, high above the ordinary concerns of life. Yet Alice could tell that Marion was wavering over some greater precipice here at Invercombe, and drawn more and more strongly towards the intoxication of what she really was, or could become. It was especially apparent as she stood and surveyed—princess, empress, rival—the darkening world. Yes, Alice could sympathise with how Marion Price felt. She could will, even, a little strengthening of Marion’s vision so that she could see out more easily across this Western landscape. Ah! These were moments which Alice treasured. Such power. Such control. The first gorgeous breezes of the opening gateway to a new Age. Then, confused, the tightrope suddenly wavering—nothing more, for all her vaunted powers, than an anxious bundle of unresolved hopes and fears—Marion Price ran, fled, back towards the house.

  Alice followed. Causing the bell of Invercombe’s telephone booth to ring, she regathered herself back on the far surface of the mirror, and waited for Marion Price to sit down.

  XVII

  ‘I HAVE A REQUEST.’

  ‘I suppose you expect surrender.’

  ‘No, no—far from it. Marion Price, I need your help.’

  Marion glanced down from the extraordinarily beautiful woman in the mirror. Instead of the dialling handle of a leather-clad booth, she half expected to see the gingham tablecloth of that Bristol tearoom where they had last met. She had that same immediate sense that Alice Meynell had long been silently reshaping the world around her into some vast and subtle trap which was now about to close.

  ‘You don’t need to listen to me now, my dear,’ she said in her sweetly musical voice. ‘You still have that choice. But, before you end this call, I think you should know, if you don’t already, that two opposing armies both lie within ten miles of Invercombe. If you simply sit tight, it won’t be long before one or other starts shelling you. That, or they may try to take Invercombe by storm, or possibly stealth. Or all of those things might happen at once …’ She shrugged inside the misty fabric of whatever clothes she was wearing. Behind her, Marion could see, smell, a recognisable space of earth and wall. Alice Meynell seemed to be at Einfell, inside that old brick booth from which the nocturnes had emerged. Indeed, judging from the splayed shapes which hung at the edges of the light, the burned and wasted bodies of the creatures were still there, and peculiarly arranged amid other odd bits of hanging. ‘You know as well as I do, Marion, not to expect logic and order at the precipice of battle. When a chance comes in these circumstances, you have to seize it in the instant, or leave it behind and watch as it is trampled underfoot.’

  Marion’s heart was pounding. ‘You can’t expect me to support the East.’ She could still scarcely believe that she and Alice Meynell were talking to each other.

  ‘What I want to suggest isn’t about battle or bloodshed. It’s about a way to put such things to an end. Or shall we just wait until my gunners or those of the West a few fields away grow trigger happy? I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that Invercombe is potentially of great strategic importance. Especially once people realise it isn’t the wrecked wasteland everyone seems to suppose. So … Do you want to listen, or shall we end it here?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Really, Marion, most of what I need to tell you are things you already know. So please bear with me if I seem to be at risk of insulting your intelligence …’ Within the subtly shifting plays of her enigmatic expression, Alice Meynell smiled. Was this woman trying to flatter her, after all the terrible things she had done? But no, Marion decided. This was a mutual recognition which, even as her gaze flickered away from the mirror to the solid world beyond, she found hard to shake off. More strongly than she had ever felt the presence of anyone inside a telephone booth, it was as if Alice Meynell were actually here. It was she, Marion, who was floating, caught as she endlessly seemed to be in the journey between one state of being and another.

  ‘Invercombe,’ Alice said, ‘may have exuded its raw aether, but a considerable amount obviously remains trapped within the energies of the house. Hence the weathertop. In my opinion, Marion, the place has always been charmed. Perhaps some untapped source of aether, or even an intelligence, resides within the very rock. But I digress. You will be aware, as you see me here, that there is an existing link to this place nearby, which is Einfell. That link, as my engineers work on it, will soon be extended back through my admittedly somewhat fragile lines all the way to the main networks of the East. Another link, meanwhile, lies from the transmission house on the border of Inve
rcombe’s estate towards the West. Now. Imagine for a moment that the few final necessary bonds which would unite all of England are briefly forged. Imagine, then, if we were to transmit Invercombe’s force down the lines in both directions—’

  ‘You’re talking about some kind of wrecking spell.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Which is what happened in the Falling.’ Barely for a moment did Alice Meynell seem uncomposed. ‘That’s history. There are—’

  After all you’ve done, you’re expecting me to pass over control of my …’ Marion paused. ‘… of Invercombe, so that you can wreak yet more damage?’

  ‘Marion.’ Alice Meynell’s face radiated genuine sadness. ‘There are many things we could talk about to do with what did or didn’t happen in the past. My poor son—who I believe is with you there, although you’ve chosen not to mention him—is in its thrall as much as any of us are. But he has always acted honourably in what he has tried to achieve. And you will also be acting honourably if you do what I propose now. But we must move on. Even in Invercombe, the clocks must sometimes run. The spell I propose we use Invercombe’s power to create would not bring down a single building—or at least only a very few which would soon fall anyway due to some inherent weakness. Neither would it kill. Although, once again, people die anyway, which is a fact you of all people will understand…