Ian R. Macleod - The Light Ages.pdf - Ian R. Macleod - margozap

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Book Information :

Genre: Science Fantasy

Author: Ian R MacLeod

Name: The Light Ages

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The Light Ages

by Ian R MacLeod

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the

author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or

dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

THE LIGHT AGES

An Ace Book

Published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced

in any form without permission.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet

or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by

law. Please purchase only authorized electronic

editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of

copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

ACE and the "A" design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First American edition: May 2003

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

MacLeod, Ian R., 1956–

The light ages : a novel / by Ian R. MacLeod.

p. cm.

ISBN 0–441–01055–5

1. Yorkshire (England)—Fiction. 2. London (England)—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6063.A24996L54 2003

823'.914—dc21

2003045111

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my wonderful daughter Emily,

who helped me stand for a while on the Turning Tower.

With love.

PART ONE

GRANDMASTER

I still see her now.

I see her in the poorest parts of London. Beyond the new iron

bridges which bear the trams above the ferries, where the Thames

spreads her fingers through tidal mud. I see her in a place beyond even

the furthest rookeries of the Easterlies, although you will not find it on

any maps. Plagued with flies and dragonlice and the reek of city effluent

in summer, greyed with smog and ice in winter, even the foulest

factories turn their backs away.

There, beyond the hovels and the wastetips of London, I see my

changeling.

I see her when I take the streets that lead away from my fine

Northcentral house. I see her when I'm worried or distracted, and when

the present seems frail. Past the tall Hyde houses. Past the elegant

grandmistresses walking their dogs, which — thin-legged, feathered,

flightlessly winged, crested like reptiles or covered in mossy clumps of

rainbow fur — scarcely seem to me like dogs at all. Skirting the huge

shops of Oxford Road, then the incredible trees of Westminster Great

Park where prams and parasols drift like paper boats, down Cheapside

where the streets grow smaller and dimmer as the sky also shrinks and

dims, hazing the roofs and chimneys as evening falls. Clerkenwell and

Houndsfleet. Whitechapel and Ashington. A smell of rubbish here and a

smell of dogs — by now ugly and ordinary — and the sound of their

barking. Not that shame or poverty could ever be said to lie here,

although the contrast with the districts where my journey began is

already strong. The people who live in these parts of the Easterlies are

still all masters rather than guildless marts: they have the jobs that

their guilds have granted them; proper furniture in their rooms.

Eventually, long after Cheapside has become Doxy Street, past

where the trams reach Stepney Terminus, the muddy streets heave and

the houses stick out like irregular teeth. Here in these far Easterlies, no

guildsmen dare live. I peer at these people as they scurry in a

landscape which seems concertinaed by giant hands, the women

cowled in grubby shawls, the men clouded with beerhouse reek, the

children quick and pale and subtly dangerous, wondering if this is

when the change into true poverty begins.

It always seems that I choose overcast days, late afternoons, dull,

hot summer evenings, midwinter Noshiftdays, for my long wanderings.

Or at least that, as I step away from the bright core of the Northcentral

life I have been living, is what each of these days subtly becomes. From

the best districts, I pass through tiers of London smoke and shadow. I

suppose that most guildsmen would give up here, if the wild impulse

had ever taken them this far. I suppose, looking up at the faces,

ageless and leering, that study my passage through holes in the

brickwork, hearing the whispering scurry of children both ahead and

behind, that I should begin to feel afraid. But people live here: I once

lived here, although that was in a different Age. So I walk on and skirt

the high walls of Tidesmeet where I once worked through a happy

summer. The scurries of the children quieten. The gargoyle faces no

longer peer. Someone dressed as I am dressed, practical and

understated in a dark coat, high boots to cope with the mud, yet

effortlessly conspicuous in the waxy sheen of wealth, clearly possesses

money. But I wouldn't bring it here with me, would I? No – or so I

imagine those ghost-grey children whisper as they congregate in alleys.

And a grandguildsman, too. The repercussions that would rain down

on them from the bastard police make murder and robbery seem

pointless. And I must have my reasons for coming this way – or I am

mad – and both thoughts will make them uneasy. I carry no

swordcane, no nightstick, no obvious weapon, not even an umbrella

against the rain which always seems to threaten on these overcast

days, but to ambush me in that space ahead where the houses press

their brows together – who knows what strange guildsman's spells I

might be carrying?

Lost also in thought, lost but mostly certain, I wander unmolested

through these stinking streets. There are better ways to circumnavigate

the far Easterlies and reach the wastetips, although I feel that I need to

acknowledge my debt to the place. There are taxi boats and smaller

ferries along the main river quays at the embankment and Riverside,

which will, on discreet payment of an excessive sum, bear you this way.

But the trade they carry is mostly male and drunk, and flounders at

midnight from the steps of clubs and guildhalls to sniff the coalsmoke air

and dismiss thoughts of home and waiting wives, or even the brothels

and dreamhouses, in favour of a different end to the day. Down, then, to

the dank sweep of the Thames, where, black-caped and top-hatted, the

grandmasters bargain and bluster before they clamber aboard the

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