Grail of the Summer Stars (Aetherial Tales)

by Freda Warrington

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  For all my friends, old and new.

  Especially for my mum, Ida Warrington.

  And as always, for my guardian angel, Mike Llewellyn.

  With all my love.

  Acknowledgments

  There are almost too many people to thank for their support, both with the Aetherial Tales series in particular and with my writing in general over the years. In no order of favor, Jenny Gordon, Justina Robson, Storm Constantine, Stephanie Burgis, Keren Gilfoyle, Anne Gay, Stan Nicholls, Tanith Lee, Mark Robson, Anne Sudworth. Thanks also to the stalwarts of the Birmingham SF and F Writers’ Group, and to my fellow members of The Write Fantastic: Kari Sperring, Juliet McKenna, Chaz Brenchley, Liz Williams, Ian Whates, Deborah J. Miller and Sarah Ash. Together as TWF we are doing our best to widen the appeal of fantasy fiction in the United Kingdom, drawing in new readers and raising the profile of the genre.

  Special thanks are also due to my agents, John R. Parker and John Berlyne of Zeno Agency, to my editor at Tor, Jim Frenkel, and to the wonderful artist Kinuko Y. Craft for creating such stunning cover art.

  As with Elfland and Midsummer Night, the settings for Grail of the Summer Stars are loosely inspired by real places, but entirely fictionalized for the purposes of the story. The museum where we find Stevie working at the start of the book, along with its staffing arrangements, administration and so on, is a confection of my imagination and not intended as a portrayal of any actual establishment.

  However, I must note that the Jewellery Quarter of Hockley, Birmingham, United Kingdom, is a real and wonderful heritage area. The Birmingham Jewellery Museum, not entirely dissimilar to Stevie’s place of work, is well worth a visit.

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Reprise

  Prelude

  1. The Triptych

  2. Sea Birth

  3. Ghosts and Shadows

  4. Light Through the Dust

  5. A Winter’s Trail

  6. The Thief

  7. Avenue of Beautiful Secrets

  8. Azantios, Falling

  9. Fela and the Lie

  10. Helena

  11. To the Labyrinth

  12. Waterfall Dreams

  13. Persephone’s Chamber

  14. Circles and Sacrilege

  15. Melusiel

  16. The White Tower

  17. Desert Springs

  18. Jigsaw Canyon

  19. The Book of Azantios

  20. The Felixatus

  21. Aurata

  22. The Eye of the Cauldron

  23. Always Summer

  Coda: Gifts and Mysteries

  Author’s Note: Landscapes of the Fantastic

  Books by Freda Warrington

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Reprise

  I see a city of gleaming black stone that shines with jewel-colors: crimson, royal purple and blue. I see labyrinthine passages and rooms where you can lose yourself for days, months.

  Lofty pillars. Balconies onto a crystal-clear night full of stars, great sparkling white galaxies like flowers. Statues of winged men looking down with timeless eyes. I want to stand on those balconies and taste the breeze and hear the stars sing and be washed in the light of the moon. There will be ringed planets, and below, the tops of feathery trees blowing gently: an undiscovered land full of streams, with willow trees in spring green, and oak and hazel—with their elemental guardians, slender birch-white ladies with soft brown hair—and mossy banks folding into water.

  And through this citadel walk graceful men and women with lovely elongated faces and calm, knowing eyes. They have seen too much. They might wear robes of medieval tapestry or jeans and a shirt but you would never mistake them for human. It’s so much more than beauty. Look at them once and you can’t look away. These are Aetherials in their oldest city, Tyrynaia.

  They have been building the citadel for thousands of years and it will never be finished. Upward it spreads, and outward, and down into the rock below. It is their seat of power: their home.

  They take the names of gods, on occasion.

  Sometimes they are heroic and help the world.

  And sometimes they are malicious and turn it upside down.

  In the deepest depths of the citadel, a ceiling of rock hangs over an underground lake. Here is Persephone’s chamber. She welcomes and cares for those who come, soul-sick with despair, to seek solace, rest and sleep. Here they need not speak, only sit on a black marble lip and contemplate the mysterious, glowing lake beneath. If you lie down in despair, Persephone will lie down with you.

  —from the diary of Faith Fox

  Prelude

  Daniel’s hands shook as he checked his watch. Five to six. Dusk had fallen two hours ago and he’d turned off the lights, relying on an orange wash of streetlight that spilled through the windows. The studio was an empty industrial space around him, darkness massing above the high steel beams. Easels and store cupboards stood stripped, the wide shallow drawers of plan cabinets yawning open. He hardly noticed the mess he’d left: scraps of paper, curled-up paint tubes, a layer of charcoal and gold-leaf dust coating everything. There was no time.

  He worked fast, fumbling as he covered the surface of the last panel with protective paper, folded the outer wooden leaves into the center, then bound the triptych in layers of bubble wrap. Better too much wrapping than too little. Nothing cooperated: clouds of plastic billowed around him and he kept losing the damned scissors. The sticky tape clung to his fingers, to everything except the edges he was trying to seal. In frustration he tore the tape with his teeth. He could barely squeeze the last, overwrapped artwork into its packing case.

  The tiny luminous bars of his watch hands moved on. Ten past six. Rain dashed the windows.

  In his rush to fasten the lid of the last case, Daniel gouged himself with the screwdriver. He barely felt the pain.

  Where the hell was the courier?

  He heard the elevator rising one floor from ground level, its doors opening onto the landing. Footsteps rang out and wheels rumbled along the metal walkway that jutted above the art center’s large public foyer. Hurriedly Daniel completed the delivery label. As an afterthought, he scrawled a note—too late to place it inside, so he folded the paper and stapled it to the crate. The noise grew louder as it bypassed other studio units, stopping abruptly at his door.

  There was a loud knock. His heart jumped into a wilder rhythm. A figure waited outside the glass-paneled door, dark against the fluorescent lights of the landing.

  Daniel held himself together long enough to exchange pleasantries with the courier as he double-checked the forms and handed over payment. Then the courier hefted all four packing cases onto a trolley, grunted a word of thanks, and went.

  Softly, Daniel closed the door behind him. It was done.

  For a moment, he thought of running after the courier, shouting at him to wait, he’d written the wrong address … Too late. Automatic doors hissed shut and he heard the elev
ator trundling downwards. No, his decision couldn’t be unmade. He knew he’d done the right thing.

  Oliver, though, would not see it that way.

  Daniel walked to the middle of his studio and looked up at a steel beam above his head. He reached out to a low cabinet nearby and picked up the tangle of rope he’d left on top. The rope was a thin blue nylon twist, designed for lashing together heavy goods … strong enough to bear the weight of a lean human body. He positioned a high stool. Standing on the seat should give him enough height to lash the noose to the beam.

  The letter he’d written to his mother lay inside the top drawer of the cabinet. There was nothing else to say.

  He looked up, testing the strength of the rope between his hands. He felt no fear, only a whooshing sensation that shook his whole body. It was a trance-like feeling, a flood carrying away all clear thought. His visions would end and there would be peace …

  “Daniel.”

  He heard the voice, glimpsed the flash of glass as the door swung open. Turning, he confronted a silhouette with light spinning a white-gold halo through the edges of its hair.

  “Are you ready?” said the shadow. “It’s time to go.”

  1

  The Triptych

  Even when the machines were silent, Stevie could still hear them. Ghosts thronged the empty factory: women in long dark skirts and men in overalls, busy in the dusty gloom. Their work clothes had no pockets or cuffs to trap even a speck of gold dust. The workers mouthed soundlessly at each other, lip-reading over the whir of lathes and the steady thump of presses … she wondered at the long hours, the sweaty heat, their overcrowded backstreet homes with shared toilets in outhouses, and no running water …

  Stevie shook her head, pushing the ghosts away. Overactive imagination. She “saw things” so readily that doctors had diagnosed visual migraine, or even some odd form of epilepsy. She wasn’t the only member of staff to sense presences, but her visions often went to extremes.

  A pounding noise broke her trance.

  “Stevie, are you there? Someone can’t read the ‘Closed’ sign.”

  “Okay, Fin, I’ll get it.”

  The old jewelry firm, Soames & Salter, was a museum now. Over thirty years ago, the owners had retired. Unable to sell the unmodernized business, they’d simply locked the doors and walked away, leaving a time capsule of work methods that had barely changed from 1880 to 1980. Tools had been left strewn on benches, dirty teacups abandoned … this sense of sudden desertion was so carefully preserved by the curators that it made visitors shiver.

  Stevie made a last check that all lights and machinery were switched off, then closed the door on the old factory and hurried through the museum gift shop.

  The person banging on the entrance door was not a late visitor, but a wet and fed-up-looking delivery driver, his van parked crookedly against rush-hour traffic.

  He presented a large packing crate, addressed to Stevie Silverwood, Museum of Metalwork, Hockley, Birmingham. As she helped him drag the case inside, he muttered apologies for the delay, blaming “problems at the depot” over the weekend, and that they’d tried to deliver the previous day only to find the museum closed.

  “Yes, we’re shut on Mondays,” said Stevie. “It doesn’t matter, I wasn’t expecting a parcel in the first place.”

  She signed his electronic notepad, said her thanks—receiving a curt “Orright, pet” in return—and relocked the door behind him. A note stapled to the crate was close to falling off. Stevie detached the scrap and frowned at it.

  The world needs to see this, stated the scribbled handwriting.

  “Oh, really?” she said aloud. “Is the world ready for it, whatever it is?”

  Outside, streetlamps splashed the rainy grey dusk. Stevie watched the van pulling away into the sluggish traffic along Vyse Street. Although she’d turned off the main lights before he arrived, a parade of car headlights flashed over display cases full of jewelry, glinting on shelves stacked with local history books and souvenirs. Enough light to read by.

  Please exhibit for me. Sorry can’t explain. D.

  “Who was that?” Fin, her assistant, called from a back room that served as an office-cum-kitchen. Stevie could hear the soft rattle of computer keys.

  “Grumpy courier with a parcel,” she called back.

  “Didn’t know we were expecting a delivery.”

  “Nor me.”

  The crate stood waist-high, heavy but manageable. She laid it flat, grabbed a screwdriver from a drawer behind the counter and set to work. Removing the screws and prizing off the wooden lid took only a minute. Inside she found a thick sandwich of bubble wrap, apparently protecting a canvas of some kind. She sat back on her heels, puzzled.

  “Surely I didn’t arrange an exhibition and simply forget about it?” Raising her voice, she called, “Fin, is there anything in the diary?”

  “About what?”

  “Someone’s sent us artwork, I think.”

  The sender had sealed the package in overzealous haste, as if to make unwrapping it as frustrating as possible. Stevie took scissors to the job. A sea of bubble wrap mounted around her as she pulled off layer after layer.

  “Who’s the artist?” said Fin, emerging from the office.

  In her heart, Stevie knew, but she needed to be certain. “See if you can find the documentation.”

  Fin inspected the crate and freed a label from a see-through sleeve. “Sent five days ago from a place called ‘the Jellybean Factory.’ North London postcode … Does that ring a bell?”

  Stevie frowned. “Oh, yes, it’s familiar. So’s the handwriting.”

  “If someone’s sent them on spec, that’s naughty. It is normal etiquette to ask first.”

  “Unless I agreed to something that’s slipped my mind. Am I going nuts?”

  “I reserve my right not to answer that,” said Fin, pushing her reading glasses into her curly brown hair.

  Stevie pulled a face at her. She liked Fin, who was energetic, blunt and good-hearted. They made a good team. “Seriously. We didn’t, did we?”

  The annex housing the gift shop, café and further galleries had been refurbished in sleek modern style, in contrast to the factory. A large open arch led into a second room that they used as exhibition space. A clockmaker’s bench occupied one corner. Fin glanced in and said, “There’s not much spare wall area, and we’ve got the needlework guild next month … Any clues?”

  “There’s a note.”

  Fin took the scrap, dropping her glasses back onto her nose. “‘The world needs to see this’?” She raised an eyebrow. “Modest. What was the artist thinking? ‘Hmm, shall I submit my masterpiece to a famous institution in London or New York? No, I’ve a better idea—I’ll send it to an obscure gallery in the outskirts of Birmingham.’ Mysterious.”

  “Hey, not so obscure! We didn’t win a ‘best small museum’ award for nothing, you know. We’re world-famous.”

  “Okay, but still … Who’s D?”

  Stevie didn’t answer. As the last pieces of wrapping and protective paper floated away, she rose to her feet with the object between her hands. The weight was unexpected. It was not canvas after all, but a wooden panel shaped like a Gothic arch, covered by two hinged flaps.

  A triptych.

  Stevie carried the panel to the counter and spread the side leaves at angles so that the structure stood up on its own. She felt a thrill of magic in opening the panel to reveal the artwork inside, like a child with an Advent calendar window.

  She saw a vibrant wash of orange and red, lots of bright gold leaf reminiscent of a Byzantine icon, a pair of fiery female eyes staring at her … In the gloom, the effect was luminous.

  “Wow,” said Fin behind her. “This is your brain on drugs!”

  The central image showed a goddess-like figure in a mountainous red desert. In the foreground lay a tumble of stonework: a fallen temple? The female, stepping from behind the stump of a column, had auburn hair swirling around a pale golde
n face with glaring eyes. A face or a mask? Her complexion had the sheen of fur, and strong-boned features more feline than human. A regal, feral cat deity. One hand was holding a crystal sphere up to the heavens, the other pointing at a molten yellow fissure in the earth.

  The brushstrokes were so precise and detailed that everything seemed to be in motion, vibrating and rushing around the central figure. There was so much light and energy, it hurt the eyes.

  The side panels showed equally enigmatic visions. On the left sat statues of a king and queen, side by side like pharaohs in a ruined palace. On the right, a silver globe emitted a beam of light towards the stars. In the background stood a priest-like figure with a severe expression.

  Stevie was silent, wondering.

  “The artist’s gone a bit crazy with the gold and silver leaf, hasn’t he?” said Fin. “I need sunglasses. The way he’s caught the light is amazing, but it looks like everything’s vibrating. I wouldn’t want it on my wall, would you? Imagine confronting that, with a hangover.” She bent closer. “I can’t read the signature.”

  “I can. I know the artist.” Stevie gave a soft laugh. “I went to college with him. Danifold.” A strange shiver went through her. “Well, bloody hell.”

  “Who?”

  “Daniel Manifold,” said Stevie. “We used to call him ‘Danifold.’ I’d know his work anywhere. He was obsessed by Byzantine religious icons and that was his thing, adapting those methods to his own ideas. He was always arguing with his lecturers, who frowned on his non-modern style, but he stuck to his guns. This is amazing.”

  “What’s it supposed to be, though? It’s all sort of … wrong. It doesn’t look like any religious subject I’ve ever seen.”

  “No,” said Stevie. “He took the style and played with it. Dreams, folklore, myths … whatever came into his head, I suppose.”

  “He sounds very creative.”