Was it true, or one of her lies?
Would he crumble to dust, would old age fall on him as soon as his foot touched the outside? Was Venn’s estate really a protected outpost of the Summerland, with nothing but death beyond its borders?
There was only one way to find out. He stood up, balancing.
From here he could see the weathervane on the church tower at Grimsby Deep, miles away. That was the church he had been baptized in; vaguely he remembered a gaunt, echoing space. It had stayed with him, but it must be very different in there now. For him seventeen years ago. He had not changed by as much as a lost eyelash.
Everything else had rippled through fat, inexplicable changes. Houses appeared, almost overnight. Carts had crawled, then cars had sped up the lanes. Small planes had fought each other in the sky. Pylons grew. Strange wires that the swallows gathered on every autumn hummed in the frosty wind. What were they all? When had they come? He couldn’t remember. And he had never been beyond, to the places where cars and people arrived from, where the planes sailed from, the small fascinating silver birds that flew so high.
He had asked her once, what they were. She had kissed his forehead and said, “They are the enemy, sweet boy.”
A voice said, “You would be a fool to jump.”
He wobbled, then crouched and turned, furious. “Don’t creep up on me!”
The Shee, waiting in the dark branches of a pine, smiled its charming smile. It was a male, gracefully dressed in blue and silver, its long hair tied back. “What are you looking at? May I see?”
They all had this childish curiosity. He said, “A car. Someone’s parked it here. And I think they’ve come inside.”
He could see from the snow that the car had been here a while. It was a dark, sleek machine, and its skin gave out no heat.
The Shee wandered over to the gates and Gideon jumped down beside it. The creature indicated with a long finger. “Look.”
The gates were open; as far apart as a man could slither. They swung, slightly, in the icy wind. The camera was already clotted with snow. Gideon said, “What is that thing?”
“Venn’s scrying device.” The Shee gave a languid grin. “It will see nothing today. Not even these.”
They both gazed at the footprints that led through the gap between the snowy gates, and up the dark, clogged drive.
A man’s. And the splayed spoor of the wolf.
The whine rose in Jake’s teeth and nerves. It shivered down his spine. He wanted to yell for it to stop, but he forced himself to keep still, his eyes fixed on Sarah. She was gazing into the mirror. He moved so he was behind her, but saw only blackness.
“Nothing.”
“Exactly.” Venn’s voice was breathless with triumph. “Nothing. No reflections. Nothing.”
Sarah said, “A room. A man, thickset, with a mustache. He’s seen me. He’s talking to me.”
The whine rose to screaming pitch. The web vibrated. Piers said quickly, “Shutting down.”
“No!” Venn’s eyes were on the mirror, searching. “Not yet. Not till I see it. Where is it, Sarah? Where?”
But she spoke, not to him but to the mirror. “Where is this? Who are you?”
The answer came from no one in the room. It was a thin, pompous voice, oddly quailing. It said, “My name…my name is Symmes.”
The Shee knelt and touched the footprints, sniffed them. Then it raised its hands to its ears. “What is that terrible whining cry?”
Gideon was wondering that too. “Is it the world freezing up?”
He had been with them so long, they had taught him to hear as they did. He could hear the cold night coming down, puddles on the graveled track hardening infinitely slowly, the icy crystals lengthening and creaking to a pitted surface. He could hear the birds edging on their frozen roosts, the blown barbs of their feathers, the blinks of their beady black eyes. He could hear the frost crisp over the windowpanes of Wintercombe.
But this whine was worse than all of that.
“Sounds like a human machine.” The Shee rose, disgusted.
Gideon nodded. The creatures’ aversion to metal still pleased him, even after all this time. It was their one weakness. The Shee listened, snow dusting its thin shoulders, its moon-pale hair glimmering.
“Summer will want us to investigate.” Gideon turned.
The Shee’s eyes went sly. “Enter the Dwelling? Many have tried. Venn is too careful.”
“For you, he is. But I might be able to….”
“Summer forbids it.”
It was a risk. They were treacherous beings—this one would betray him in an instant. So he said heavily, “You’re right. And after all, tonight, there’s the Feast.”
The creature grinned, as he had known it would. “The Midwinter Feast! I’d forgotten! We must get back.”
Its quicksilver mind would be full instantly of the promise of the music, the terrible, fascinating music of the Shee. The music that devoured lives and time and his own humanity, the music that enslaved him and haunted him and that he hungered for like a drug.
“You go,” he said. “I’ll come later.”
“I have to bring you. She’ll be furious.” Its bird-eyes flickered. He saw the small pointed teeth behind its smile.
“I’ll follow you. I just want to see where these prints go.”
It hesitated, tormented. Then nodded. “Very well. But be quick!” It turned, and its patchwork of clothes ebbed color, a magical camouflage, so that now it wore a suit of ermine and white velvet, the buttons on its coat silver crystals of ice. It stepped sideways, and was gone.
Gideon kicked the gates shut.
He ran, fast and hard, toward the house.
The screech ratcheted up the scale, a nightmare howl that made Piers snatch his hands back and swear.
Sparks cracked in the dark.
“Turn it off!” Wharton yelled.
Sarah was sucked flat against the web. Behind her, grabbing her arms, Venn said, “I can’t see him. Is he there? What does he look like?”
She screamed. “I’m falling. I’m falling!!”
The mirror was gone. It was a wild, gaping rent in the world. A scatter of objects lifted from the desk, flew, and were sucked straight in. With a vicious crack, part of the web came free, one green cable whipping past Jake’s head and vanishing with a bright blink like lightning.
“Stop it!” Jake yelled.
“Not yet.” Venn shoved him off. “I’ve got you, Sarah.”
But she was fighting him, struggling back. Jake yelled, “Let her go!”
He grabbed her. A fusillade of rivets cracked past him; he dragged her down. For a terrible unbalanced moment he and she and Venn were one tangled person, dragged and flung forward. The green web held them against it, but the force of the hole was too strong, it pulled hair, hands, breath like an immense invisible magnet, and then just as Jake could feel the agonizing suffocation rise to his throat, the whine cracked, and with an explosion that flung him backward off his feet the mirror came back.
He staggered. The room roared with smoke. Wharton was yelling, “Fire!” In the corners of his eyes brilliant crackles of red were spurting up.
Sarah pulled him up. She screamed something, but his ears were ringing.
Flames whoomed into the roof. He saw Piers and Wharton appear and vanish through clouds of steam, a ferocious hissing, and then something seemed to pop in his head and his hearing came back, and the fire extinguishers were pumping fierce cascades of foam over the sparking cables, the flaring embers of books and circuits.
And then, in a terrible sudden silence, there was only his breathing.
When I came to I was lying in my room with my Indian servant applying stimulants to my brow. The room was oddly dark and stank of burning, with some of the furniture overturned, but strangely nothing seemed severely damaged. A few objects were strewn on the floor, smoldering.