"Hello, Alistair."
He was Principal Consort of the family, by long tradition, but I
was damned if I’d call him Grandfather. My real grandfather, Martha’s first
husband, Arthur, died fighting the Kiev Conspiracy in 1957. I never even knew
him.
Alistair and I never did get along. Officially, his function in
the family was as personal advisor to the Matriarch, but that was just something
to keep him busy, so he wouldn’t realise he was just a glorified gopher. He’d
never been on a field mission in his life, to his and everyone else’s relief.
Before he married Martha he was something in the City, but only because he
inherited it. Word was, the City was glad to be rid of him. The whole family
knew he was useless, but Grandmother loved him, so out of respect for her no one
ever said anything. While making very sure Alistair was never allowed near
anything important. Or breakable. There’s one like Alistair in every family.
Martha studied me coldly. "It’s been quite a while since you
graced us with your presence, Edwin."
I shrugged. "I like to keep busy. And it’s not as if there’s
anything here I miss."
"After all this time, you still blame the family for the deaths
of your mother and your father," said Martha. "You should be proud of their
sacrifice."
"I am," I said. "But no one’s ever going to send me to my death
on an operation that wasn’t planned properly. I run my own missions."
"You serve the family," Alistair said, trying for Martha’s
frosty tone and not bringing it off.
"I serve the family," I said. "In my own way."
"The people responsible for the inadequate planning of that
mission were punished long ago," said Martha. "You have to let it go, Edwin. She
was my daughter too." She made a deliberate effort to change the subject,
looking me up and down. "What is that you’re wearing, Edwin? Is this really the
best you could do on your first visit to the Hall in ten years?"
"Sorry," I said. "But I’ve been recently diagnosed as fashion
intolerant. I can’t wear anything good, in case I develop style."
She looked at me. "You know I don’t find humour funny, Edwin.
And stand up straight. Do you want to develop round shoulders? And when are you
going to get married and give the family children? Like everyone else, you have
a duty to provide the family with fresh blood, to keep us strong and vital. We
have presented you with several lists of perfectly respectable candidates from
suitable families. Any one of whom would make you a good match. You’re getting a
little too old to be so choosy."
"That is something else I’ll decide for myself," I said firmly.
"What was wrong with dear Stephanie Mainwearing?" said Martha.
"Delightful creature, I thought."
"Oh, come on, Grandmother. If she was any more inbred, she’d be
her own sister."
"Alice Little?"
"Lives in a world of her own and only comes out for mealtimes.
Lots of mealtimes."
"Penelope Creighton?"
"You have got to be kidding! She’s slept with more women than I
have! Don’t your people do even basic research anymore?"
"Well…are you at least seeing anyone at the moment, Edwin?"
I considered telling her about Silicon Lily but rose above the
temptation. "No one special, Grandmother," I said.
"I hope you’re being…careful, Edwin," said Alistair in an even
more snotty voice than usual. "You know how the family feels about bastards."
I looked at him for a moment, and then said, "I’m always
careful, Alistair."
"After all," said Alistair, "whoever you eventually settle on,
she has to be acceptable to the family."
"Like you, Alistair?" I said.
Martha decided to change the subject again. "You have been
summoned back to the Hall, Edwin, because I have a very important and very
urgent mission for you."
"I had sort of gathered that," I said. "Can I just ask what
could be so important that I had to be dragged all the way back here just to
discuss it? What was wrong with the usual channels?"
"It’s a matter of security," said Martha. "It has to be you,
because everyone else is busy. Busier than ever before. You can see the boards;
the whole family is stretched to its limits. And you saw what just happened in
the Sanctity. Once, such an attack would have been unthinkable, but now the
whole family is under threat. All our best efforts have to go into defending the
family and identifying our attackers. The mission I have for you now, Edwin, is
your chance to prove your worth at last and come back to the bosom of the
family. Carry out this mission successfully, and you will have earned a seat on
the council." She paused, considering her words carefully. "Some of us have come
to believe that there is a traitor, perhaps at the very heart of the family. I
am no longer sure whom I can trust. Even my own council has become…divided, and
quarrelsome, of late. As an outsider, you might see things the rest of us
cannot. Prove yourself with this mission, Edwin. I would value your voice in my
council."
I just stood there and looked at her. I really hadn’t expected
that. The council was where family policy was decided. Where all the decisions
that mattered were made. It had honestly never even occurred to me that I might
end up on it some day. I wasn’t even sure I wanted such an honour, or such
responsibility, but I had to admit I was tempted. If only so I could use my new
exalted position to identify and help others like myself in the family.
"What’s the mission?" I said flatly.
The Matriarch smiled briefly for the first time. "Your mission
is to take the Soul of Albion back to Stonehenge and rebury it under the main
sacrificial altar, where it belongs. Once it is back in place, the Soul will be
safe again. The Stones will protect it. In the wrong hands, the Soul could bring
down England, and perhaps even the Droods."
I was nodding even as she spoke. This had to be what Jacob and I
had overheard them discussing, on his dead television.
Martha called to half a dozen armed guards, who brought forward
a great oaken chest sealed with solid silver bars and cold iron padlocks. On top
of which the whole casket practically crackled with protective spells. The
guards couldn’t have handled it more respectfully if it had been filled to the
brim with nitroglycerin. They placed the casket very carefully at Martha’s feet,
and then almost tripped over each other as they backed away from it, at speed.
Martha gave them one of her best icy looks and undid the bands and padlocks with
a Word. They snapped open, one after the other, and the defence spells
immediately started warming up, until Martha shut them down with a quick
gesture. The casket lid opened by itself, and Martha reached in and drew out a
small silver jewel box, no bigger than her hand.
She turned the delicate key in its lock, and the box opened to
reveal a bed of red plush velvet and on it the Soul of Albion. A polished
crystal sphere, no bigger than my thumb, it blazed with unearthly fires. It was
impossibly, heartstoppingly beautiful, almost painful to the eyes, like the
platonic ideal of every gem or jewel or precious stone that ever was. All across
the War Room people stopped what they were doing and looked around, sensing the
presence of something new and wonderful in their midst.
The Soul is supposed to have fallen to Earth from the stars some
three thousand years ago, but there are more legends about the Soul than you can
shake a grimoire at. Terribly beautiful, impossibly powerful, linked forever to
the land in which it fell. Martha snapped the lid of the jewel box shut, cutting
off the brilliant light, and we all breathed a little more easily again. While
its light blazed, it was almost impossible to think of anything but the Soul.
Martha glared around her, and everyone quickly got back to work again. She
locked the box and handed it to me. I accepted it gingerly. It felt strangely
light, almost insubstantial in my hand. I slipped it into my jacket pocket,
taking my hand away from the box as quickly as possible. On the whole, I think
I’d have felt safer carrying a backpack nuke with the timer already running.
"As long as the Soul of Albion remains in that box, it is
protected by powerful masking spells," said Martha. "And the lead lining should
shield you from most of the Soul’s destructive radiation."
"Oh, good," I said. "I feel so much safer now."
Long and long ago, so far back that history becomes legend and
myth, someone used the Soul to perform a mighty magic, and now as long as the
Soul of Albion rests in its appointed place within the great circle of standing
stones that is Stonehenge, England is safe from all threats of invasion. (There
is another legend, about three royal Crowns of Anglia, but that was always just
a diversion.) King Harold unearthed the Soul and took it with him to Hastings in
1066, thinking it would help him stand off William of Normandy, the fool. After
the battle, William the Conqueror personally oversaw the returning of the Soul
to Stonehenge, and no one had moved it since.
Until now.
"I have to ask," I said. "Who the hell thought it was a good
idea to bring the Soul of Albion all the way here in the first place? And have
they been given a really good slapping?"
Alistair sniffed and did his best to look down his nose at me.
"That concerns policy, Edwin. You don’t need to know. Suffice to say…there were
security issues involved."
"However," Martha said quickly, "given the recent attacks on the
Hall and now the Heart itself, it has been decided that the Soul should be
returned to its rightful place, and the sooner the better. Originally, your
uncle James was to have performed this mission. That’s why we called him back
from the Amazon jungles. But we all feel that under…current circumstances, the
movements of a major agent like the Gray Fox are bound to be more clearly
monitored than usual. If any of our enemies discovered he was heading for
Stonehenge, they might draw some very accurate conclusions. On the other hand, a
fairly minor, semi-rogue operative such as yourself might well slip under their
radar and go unnoticed."
"Spell out the catch for me," I said. "Just so I can be sure
I’ve got it right."
"I would have thought it was obvious," said Martha, meeting my
gaze unflinchingly. "If you are noticed, and your mission deduced, the odds are
that every bad thing in the world will come for you, desperate for a chance to
get their hands on the legendary Soul of Albion."
"And then my mission turns into a suicide run," I said, nodding
slowly. "No wonder you felt the need to bribe me with the offer of a place on
the council. The odds are you’re sending me to my death."
"But will you do it?" said the Matriarch. "For the family, and
for England?"
"Of course," I said. "Anything for England."
So I went off to pay a visit to the family Armourer. Bit of a
dry old stick, but there’s nothing he doesn’t know about weapons, devices, and
things that go boom, whether scientific or magical in nature. In the more than
likely event of something going horribly wrong on my new mission, it was clear I
was going to need all the serious weaponry I could get my hands on, if I was to
protect the Soul of Albion from all comers.
I wanted a new gun. A big gun. A really, really big gun. With
atomic bullets.
The family armoury is situated a decent distance beneath the
west wing, set even deeper in the bedrock than the War Room. That way when
(rather than if) the whole armoury finally blows itself to hell, it won’t take
the rest of the Hall with it. The Armourer and his staff, geniuses one and all
though they may be, and enthusiastic to a fault, have always had a tendency
towards the kick it and see what happens school of scientific enquiry. They also
have unlimited access to guns, grimoires, and unstable chemicals. I’m amazed
this part of England is still here.
The present armoury is set up in what used to be the old wine
cellars, behind vast and heavy blast-proof doors. Designed to keep things in,
rather than out. The cellars are basically a long series of connected stone
chambers, with bare plastered walls and curving ceilings, all but buried under a
multicoloured spaghetti of tacked-up electrical wiring. The fluorescent lighting
was a sometime thing, and the huge air-conditioning system grumbled constantly
to itself. The stone chambers were full to bursting with the Armourer’s extended
staff: researchers, expediters, mechanics, weaponeers, and human guinea pigs.
(Someone had to test each new device. This was decided by a lottery among the
staff, and the loser was the one who wasn’t smart enough to fix the outcome in
advance.)
The armoury is always coming up with new weapons devised,
constructed, and tested right here in the labs. Which is why the place is always
so appallingly noisy. I stood by the closed blast-proof doors awhile, waiting
for my ears to adjust to the din. Men and women with earnest, preoccupied faces
bustled back and forth, giving their whole attention to the latest generation of
deadly devices they were producing for agents to use in the field. And hopefully
getting all the bugs out in advance. I could still remember the explosive
whoopee cushion, which didn’t, and the utterly impenetrable arm-mounted force
shield, which wasn’t. No one paid me any attention at all, but I was getting
used to that.
Lights flared brightly, shadows danced, and lightning crawled
all over one wall like electric ivy. Sharp chemical stinks fought it out with
the gentler aromas of crushed herbs, while molten metal flowed sluggishly into
ceramic moulds, and smoke drifted gently on the air from the latest unfortunate
incident. The armoury didn’t have a first-aid box; it had its own adjoining
hospital ward. A hell of a lot of people crowded around test benches and
futuristic lab equipment, alchemical retorts and silver-bullet moulds, and of
course the ubiquitous computers and chalked pentagrams. Most of these very busy
people were cursing loudly and emphatically as they tried to persuade their
latest projects to do what they were supposed to without exploding, melting
down, or turning the experimenter into something small and fluffy. Somebody
close to me reached for a handy lump hammer, and I decided to go somewhere else.