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."
CHAPTER SIX
Dangerous Lab Interns
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.)