Free Ice and Fire: Chung Kuo Series by David Wingrove

while at her back
     the house grew slowly
     nearer.
    Solitary, long abandoned, it awaited them.
    The foreshore was overgrown. Weeds grew waist-high in the spaces between the rocks.
     Beyond, the land was level for thirty yards or so then climbed, slowly at first, then
     steeply. The house
     wasn’t visible from where they stood, in the cool beneath the branches, and even further
     along, where the path turned, following the contours of the shoreline, they could
     see only a small
     part of it, jutting up, white between the intense green of the surrounding trees.
    The land was strangely, unnaturally silent. Meg looked down through the trees. Below
     them, to their right, was the cove, the dark mouth of the cave almost totally submerged,
     the branches of the
     overhanging trees only inches above the surface of the water. It made her feel odd.
     Not quite herself.
    ‘Come on,’ said Ben, looking back at her. ‘We’ve not long. Mother will be back by
     two.’
    They went up. A path had been cut from the rock. Rough-hewn steps led up steeply,
     hugging an almost sheer cliff face. They had to force their way through a tangle of
     bushes and branches. At the
     top they came out into a kind of clearing. There was concrete underfoot, cracked but
     reasonably clear of vegetation. It was a road. To their left it led up into the trees.
     To their right it ended
     abruptly, only yards from where they stood, at an ornate cast-iron gate set into a
     wall.
    They went across and stood there, before the gate, looking in.
    The house lay beyond the gate; a big, square, three-storey building of white stone,
     with a steeply pitched roof of grey slate. They could see patches of it through the
     overrun front garden.
     Here, more noticeably than elsewhere, nature had run amok. A stone fountain lay in
     two huge grey pieces, split asunder by an ash that had taken seed long ago in the
     disused fissure at its centre.
     Elsewhere the regular pattern of a once elaborate garden could be vaguely sensed,
     underlying the chaotic sprawl of new growth.
    ‘Well?’ she said, looking up at him. ‘What now?’
    The wall was too high to climb. The gate seemed strong and solid, with four big hinges
     set into the stone. A big, thick-linked steel chain was wrapped tightly over the keyhole,
     secured by a
     fist-sized padlock.
    Ben smiled. ‘Watch.’
    Taking a firm hold of two of the upright bars, he shook the gate vigorously, then
     gave it one last sharp forward thrust. With a crash it fell inward, then swung sideways,
     twisting against the
     restraining chain.
    Ben stepped over it, then reached back for her. ‘The iron was rotten,’ he said, pointing
     to the four places in the stone where the hinges had snapped sheer off.
    She nodded, understanding at once what he was really saying to her.
Be careful here. Judge nothing by its appearance.
    He turned from her.
    She followed, more cautious now, making her way through the thick sprawl of greenery
     towards the house.
    A verandah ran the length of the front of the house. At one end it had collapsed.
     One of the four mock-doric pillars had fallen and now lay, like the broken leg of
     a stone giant, half-buried in
     the window frame behind where it had previously stood. The glass-framed roof of the
     verandah was cracked in several places where branches of nearby trees had pushed against
     it, and the whole of the
     wooden frame – the elaborately carved side pieces, the stanchions, rails and planking-was
     visibly rotten. Ben stood before the shallow flight of steps that led up to the main
     entrance, his
     head tilted back as he studied the frontage.
    ‘It’s not what I expected,’ he said as she came alongside him. ‘It seems a lot grander
     from the river. And bigger. A real fortress of a place.’
    She took his arm. ‘I don’t know. I think it is rather grand. Or was.’
    He turned and looked at her. ‘Did you bring the lamp?’
    She nodded.
    ‘Good. Though I doubt there’ll be much to