The Light Ages Read Online Free

cotton. The air filled with a bright, sharp smell as he sprinkled it.
    Amazingly, he handed the wad over to me. ‘Rub that on your wrist.’
    As I applied the stuff to my skin, I felt the chill of destiny come upon me. It was just as I expected. There was no pain, no reddening. An even whiter patch of skin and blue vein shone. Master Tatlow was unimpressed. ‘Now drop it in the bin.’
    ‘Isn’t that … ?’
    Misunderstanding, he attempted a smile. ‘You’ve probably heard from your friends that Testing hurts. Don’t believe any of it. It happens to everyone. It even happened to me …’ From the same leather case, he produced another jar, smaller this time. It seemed to be empty for a moment, then it filled with silver light. I felt an odd singing in my ears, a pressure behind my eyes. This time, it truly was blazing with the characteristic wyreglow of aether; which is bright in a dimness such as that room, and throws shadows in daylight. In the silence which blossomed as he opened out a device which looked like a combination of a bracelet and horse’s bridle and slipped it over my left wrist, I could hear, more plainly than ever, the pounding of Bracebridge’s aether engines. SHOOM BOOM SHOOM BOOM.
    The aether chalice had a screwthread which attached itself to a brass protrusion of the leather collar enclosing my wrist. Master Tatlow held my arm firm. ‘Now, lad. D’you know what to say?’
    We’d spent the last two shifterms rehearsing nothing else.
    ‘The Lord God the Elder in all his Power has granted this Realm the Blessing for which I now Thank Him with all my Heart and will Honour with all my Labours. I solemnly promise that I will Honour all Guilds, especially my own and that of my Father and all his Fathers before him. I will not bear Witness against those to whom I am Apprenticed. I will not traffic with Demons, Changelings, Fairies or Witches. I will praise God the Elder and all his Works. I will Honour each Noshiftday in his Name, and … and I will … I will accept this Mark as my own Sign of the Blessing in the Infinite Love of the God and the Stigmata of my Human Soul.’
    Still gripping my arm, Master Tatlow gave the aether chalice a twist.
    For a moment, there was nothing. But his attention was fixed on me as it hadn’t been before. I gave a surprised gasp. It felt as if I had been driven through with a frozen nail. It rocketed into my mouth in spears of blood and pain. SHOOM … BOOM … Then everything contracted again, and I was standing there beside the desk and level with Master Tatlow’s face as, with a twist of the chalice and a brisk snap of clasps, he withdrew from my wrist the thing which had tortured me.
    ‘You see,’ he muttered. ‘Wasn’t so bad, was it? You’re just like all the rest of us now. Ready to join your daddy’s guild.’
    So I strode away from Board School through an autumn fog which was rolling in quick and cold and early, pausing only in Shipley Square to glare at a verdigrised statue of the Grandmaster of Painswick, Joshua Wagstaffe, who stood in indeterminate mid-gesture just as he stood in squares across all of England. Not, I thought, that I blamed the man personally for discovering aether. Someone else would have been bound to do so even if he hadn’t, wouldn’t they? And, if they hadn’t, where would the world be? Even the Frenchmen with their tails and the goat-eyed men of Cathay were said to have their spells, their guilds. The fog swirled around me, turning the people into ghosts, the houses and trees into suggestions of lands I would never see. When I got back to our house on Brickyard Row, I kicked open the back door and carried trails of them with me as I stomped into the kitchen.
    ‘There you are …’ My mother came briskly from the parlour bearing the vinegared rag she’d been using to clean the brassware. ‘Wondered what all the noise was about.’
    I dropped to the three-legged stool beside the stove and dragged off my boots. Suddenly,