Read Online The Light Ages by Ian R. MacLeod - Free Book Online Page B

pair. More and more of the crystal growth became apparent as we crossed into what would once have been the state rooms of Redhouse, although most of their roofs and the once-ornate plaster of many of the walls had fallen away. At first, there were just tiny grains of engine ice powdering the ruined floors. Then, larger, chandelier-like excrescences began to droop from the few remaining beams that spanned the ceilings.
    ‘Lots more people used to live here,’ Annalise said matter-of-factly. ‘But they had to stop. They used to work aether engines here, just like in Bracebridge ..
    So she’d heard of Bracebridge! But the questions, the marvels, were coming too quickly. We had entered a room which reached all the way up through the house to the oval dome of a huge and miraculously intact skylight. It was walled with spilled and sagging cliff faces of books, tiered with balconies. The place soared far beyond my comprehension of a library, although clearly it had once performed that function. Here, also, the two quietly warring sides of the house entwined. Darkly veined, the glowing growths of engine ice clogged the shelves, dripped down the stairways in a glittering foam that broke across the floor in frozen waves. Even the glass dome was half covered like a blinking eye. I touched some of the ice. The crystal was cool and brittle. It crumbled with a fizzing, tinkling sound.
    Annalise’s breath was close on my cheek.
    ‘I like to read here,’ she said.
    ‘I like reading too, or at least—’
    ‘—looking at the pictures, I suppose. The only problem is,’ she continued before I had a chance to deny it, ‘this whole library’s too old. The books fall apart.’
    I lifted a tome which lay at the top of a pile which had spilled to the floor. The pages fluttered out like snow. It seemed a sad thing; all this dying knowledge. But when I turned to Annalise, she was smiling.
    ‘Come on! Bet you can’t catch me!’ She scrambled up a banister, grabbed a book from a shelf and threw it down at me. I ducked. It skidded across the tiles. The spine was ridged with crystal.
    ‘Looking at the pictures! Bet you can’t even read!’ Another book whizzed past.
    Half angry, half laughing, I stared to climb up after her. The wood creaked and splintered. Engine ice fizzed down. Annalise fled ahead of me, slinging more books and insults.
    ‘Have you heard of Plato?’ she shouted, tossing out a tome from the rail above me which crashed below with the thud of a brick. ‘He was a person just like you, although a lot more intelligent. He invented aether long before the Grandmaster of Painswick, although he really just thought about it. It’s the fifth element, and it just goes around in circles when all the others travel in a straight line.’ Another book shot past me, spiralling down through long bars of sunlight, flapping its jewelled covers. More and more books flew by, their pages fluttering like birds, offering bright glimpses of their coloured plates. They rose and circled around me before sliding across the library’s distant chequered floor. I began to throw books out myself from the shelves around me, climbing from ledge to ledge as Annalise darted ahead. Finally, we reached a truce, and lay spread-eagled and breathless on the tiles amidst the wreckage of our battle. My scratched palms and knees were dusted silver-white. The huge, eerie library glowed.
    ‘Won’t you be in trouble for all this mess?’
    Annalise chuckled. ‘Missy doesn’t care. She’s like that—she lets me do what I want.’ Close to, she smelled earthy and salty; like any other child. ‘Nobody minds about Redhouse now. Nobody wants it but us ..
    Idly, I picked up the sprawled leaves of the book which lay nearest my fingers. Annalise was right, of course. It was the pictures rather than the words which then drew me. Here were ancient woodcuts from the Age of Kings, dark and swirling like the smoke of all the chimneys of Bracebridge in midwinter. Men