Ice House

Tim Clare

Description

War doesn't end. It sleeps. Delphine Venner remembers everything. She remembers what it is to be a child of war, and what the terrifying creatures from another world took from her all those years ago. And in that other world, Avalonia, someone waits for Delphine. Hagar, a centuries-old assassin, daily paying a terrible price for her unending youth, is planning one final death, the death that will cost her everything. The death which requires Delphine. In the battle to destroy an ageless evil, Delphine must remember who she is and be ready to fight once more, as war reawakens.

Sujets

• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• Anglia Oriental
• 21st century
• Contemporary fantasy
• East Anglia
• High fantasy
• Est-Anglie
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Canongate Books
• Date de parution: 02 mai 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786894830
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Tim Clare is a writer, poet and musician. He won Best Biography/Memoir at the East Anglian Book Awards for his first book, We Can't All Be Astronauts , while his fiction debut, The Honours , was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. He has performed his work at festivals and clubs across the world, on TV and radio. Tim has also written for the Guardian , The Times and the Big Issue , and presents the fiction writing podcast Death Of 1,000 Cuts . He lives in Norwich. @timclarepoet | timclarepoet.co.uk
Also by Tim Clare
The Honours





For Suki
The paperback edition published in 2020 by Canongate Books
First published in Great Britain, the USA and Canada in 2019 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
Distributed in the USA by Publishers Group West and in Canada by Publishers Group Canada
This digital edition first published in 2019 by Canongate Books
canongate.co.uk
Copyright © Tim Clare, 2019
The right of Tim Clare to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78689 482 3 eISBN 978 1 78689 483 0
Contents
73 Years Later
Chapter 1 Able Was I
Chapter 2 Sweet and Bitter Water
Chapter 3 When The Devil Drives
Chapter 4 The Good Doctor
Chapter 5 This Chickenshit Outfit
Chapter 6 A Time to Pluck up that which is Planted
Chapter 7 An arch where through Gleams that Untravelled World
Chapter 8 The Great White Lodge
Chapter 9 Other Shore Reached
Chapter 10 The Deep and Secret Things
Chapter 11 Wars and Rumours of Wars
Chapter 12 The Beginning of Sorrows
Chapter 13 Patience
Chapter 14 My Son Was Dead, and is Alive Again
Chapter 15 Le Morte D’Arthur
Chapter 16 The End of The War in Heaven
Chapter 17 Labyrinth
Chapter 18 The Day of the Inauguration
Chapter 19 Crawl
Chapter 22 Death Needs Time for what it Kills to Grow in
Chapter 21 The Proud Have Hid a Snare for me
Chapter 22 The Flesh of Kings
Chapter 23 Reunion
Chapter 24 The Second Death Hath No Power
Chapter 25 Burning as it Were A Lamp
Chapter 26 A Fountain of Water in the Wilderness
Chapter 27 Extinction Burst
Chapter 28 Plague
Chapter 29 Not Till The Next World
Epilogue
A man burns.
He stands at the foot of a mountain. Ropes of flame lap up his naked body. Fat drips and smokes. As he burns, he heals.
Hagar watches from the shadow of the church. She registers his torment with a slight tightening of the jaw. Her three centuries have not numbed her to suffering, but it is a familiar pain, a punch working the same bruise. Still, she has never seen a peer with gifts quite like his.
‘Who is he?’ she says.
The angel stands beside her, his slender body wreathed in vapour. He smiles winsomely.
‘My dearest friend. His name is Gideon.’
The angel’s calmness makes her belly clench. There are bodies in the river. Blood gluts the shallows. How can he be so serene?
‘And Sarai?’
‘Gone,’ says the angel.
‘What? How?’
‘Her kidnapper fled with her into the jungle. He managed to evade all our troops. He’s very ingenious.’
‘Then it’s over.’
The angel chuckles softly. ‘How quickly your faith evaporates.’
‘But everything rests on her! Arthur, we need her.’
The angel lowers his gaze. The mud around his bare feet stiffens, glistering with frost.
‘It’s not yet the time.’ The angel seems irritated, almost petulant. ‘You of all people ought to understand the value of patience.’ His expression resets, his composure returning. ‘Don’t worry. He loves the child. You’ll track her down within the decade.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know exactly. Oh, don’t look at me like that. I don’t mean to be cryptic. My god dreams out of time. I see fragments. Possibilities. But I know we can win.’
Hagar tongues the hole in her gum left by her missing eye tooth. Her skroon, Räum, is tethered to an olive tree, his canoe-shaped beak clop-clopping as he feeds on the corpse of a soldier. His feathers are dulled with road-dust, but the wet ridges of his long, straight bill shine like the pearlescent ribs of a seashell. Grey skin bags around his double-jointed knees. His legs are muscular, the middle toe of either foot extending in a wicked, blade-like talon. He glances up, fixing her with his big hazel eyes. His lashes tremble with droplets of coagulating blood.
She turns to the angel. ‘Tell me what happens.’
‘But you already know.’
‘Tell me again.’
‘Very well,’ says the angel, indulgently. ‘You face your master in Fat Maw. You die, twice. Explosions rock the spire and the city burns. Grandmama is there, and dear Gideon, of course. Sarai is with us too, but she’s no longer a child. She’s old. She has grown into her talents. You must take care of her until then. You must take care of all our charges.’ He glances towards the doorway of the old stone church. ‘Each has a role to play.’
The cornices and window arches of the church are edged with black rope, greasy snakes shrivelled and tightened from years of rain and heat. Filling the entire doorway is a golem, armoured gauntlets bunched into fists at its sides. Its breastplate is incised with an eight-pointed star and it stands beneath the archway, supported by its own armour, inert.
Hagar pats its chest. The armour is searingly hot beneath her palm.
Within the recessed helmet, two blue embers flare into life.
‘Excuse me, please,’ she says.
The vast armour oscillates, producing a tone like an organ pipe. Black fluid flows through the armour’s sealed joints, filling in limbs, flexing the articulated fingers of the gauntlets. A burnt, hoppy musk seeps from the visor slit as the golem rises, steps aside.
‘Thank you.’ Hagar walks into the church’s cool interior. Its glassless lancet windows cast narrow blades of light across shattered pews. Thorns have pushed their way through the flagstones. They fill the room with a heady, resiny perfume that opens the sinuses.
At the back of the room, slumped against the wall, is a boy.
She is glad he is alive. The golem must have subdued him with a blow to the head before retrieving him – a crudely effective tactic, but one which might easily have killed him. He is not the boy she sought – the one who holds the child – but perhaps this mistake is providential. Perhaps, if the angel speaks truly, there are no mistakes.
The boy’s face is tanned, one side discoloured by a big mauve welt. An oversized vest hangs from bony shoulders. Hagar draws her stiletto and holds it up to a sunbeam. The blade bisects the light, forming a cross.
‘His name is Henry,’ says the angel. ‘He came from England by accident.’
At this, the boy stirs.
‘I ought to kill him,’ says Hagar. ‘To be safe.’
‘No, no. He’s no threat.’
‘But anything that might—’
‘Hagar. We’re not monsters. Isolate him if you must, but remember what we fight for. We must be merciful. Henry never meant to get mixed up in all this. He was trying to protect Delphine.’
The boy moans.
‘Who?’ says Hagar.
‘Gideon’s girl, back in England. She just killed my father and grandpapa. She’ll be there, in Fat Maw. She helps us, though I don’t think she means to. That’s why I saved her from falling.’
‘How long till she arrives?’
‘Not for a good while, I should think.’ The angel’s image becomes foggy at the edges. His voice fades as his god calls him back. ‘She’ll be kept busy by the war.’
‘You said the war ended decades ago.’
The angel darkens to a silhouette. Ice crystals form in the vapour rising from his shoulders, hardening into wings.
‘Oh Hagar.’ His voice shrinks to a whisper. ‘War doesn’t end. It sleeps.’
73 YEARS LATER
Spartacus911 Truth seeker New member New Topic: HELP SEARCHING FOR OBSCURE RECORDS << on: January 12, 2009, 12:18:02 PM >> I am looking into the Neo-Pagan/Druidic rituals of Britain’s ruling families & wondered if anyone could point me towards records of bloodlines of UK nobility/banking elites? Particularly any illegitimate offspring that might not appear on official documents? Interested in members of (hugely under-researched) pre-war Mithras cult SPIM (1932–35) (poss. linked to British Thuleans). They were based in the East of England, on the site of an ancient medieval grove renamed Alderberen Hall (from the German Ö l die Beeren [lit. ‘oil the berries’] referring to the anointing oil & the elderberries symbolising witchcraft & the harvest – classic ritualistic elements in ancient druidic human sacrifices) where they reportedly conducted various occult rites, mainly symbolic tauroctonies (a survivor account describes human participants dressed in horns & ritually murdered). Known members included: Lazarus Stokeham , 4th Earl Alderberen [DROWNED SELF IN LAKE] Graham Burchfield , 1st Baron Wolfbrooke (newspaper magnate with financial links to the Rothschilds ) [REMAINS RECOVERED FROM FIRE]
Ivanovich Georgi Propp (33rd degree Freemason & White Russian émigré, underwent initiation w/ Blavatsky, occultist) [VANISHED] Would appreciate any help investigating. Thanks.
‘Solitude is the school of genius’ Rob Pettifer LP bountyhunter Moderator Re: HELP SEARCHING FOR OBSCURE RECORDS << on: January 13, 2009, 08:39:06 AM >>
Spartacus, please stop posting these. This is a vinyl collectors’ forum. ‘hellac addict, Deadhead and Beefheart, no YOU’RE a hoarder ;)’ Spartacus911 Truth seeker New member Re: HELP SEARCHING FOR OBSCURE RECORDS << on: January 13, 2009, 10:18:58 AM >>
‘I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.’ ‘Solitude is the school of genius’
CHAPTER 1
ABLE WAS I
D elphine woke up and remembered: Thompson was dead. Her spectacles lay upside-down on the bedside table, beside an ashtray of polished green alabaster. Her dressing gown still hung from its peg on the door, yellow silk brocade with black satin cuffs. The world was trudging on, callously normal. She lay there, letting the