Spira Mirabilis (60 page)

An echoing sound slowly became a voice that dripped into her ear like curdled milk. ‘Are you awake, Handmaid?’

Sofia tried to feign unconsciousness, but a sharp slap to her face made her eyes fly open.

‘There you are!’ The First Apprentice was leaning over her, reaching up to her wrists. ‘We’ve danced this dance for so long and yet only now, at one minute to midnight, do we find an opportunity to talk.’

He turned and waded away from her, through the melan pool. Behind him, General Spinther lay still beside the steps. Pedro was nowhere to be seen. She looked up at her wrists and saw they were bound to the needle. She looked down at her feet and screamed: the melan was clinging to the needle’s base, and it was slowly rising.

‘You understand that this is no idle construction – you know my methods, having seen the Molè from inside – its best vantage, I always thought.’

‘I didn’t appreciate the view. That’s why I burnt it,’ Sofia said, trying to keep the terror from her voice though the melan was flowing inexorably up the curved surface. It was rising at a steady rate, with occasional lurches when dark slivers like elongated maggots burst from its smooth surface and found a new purchase. It was just a braccia from her feet now, and it was getting closer.

‘You saved me a lot of work that night,’ the First Apprentice admitted. ‘The Molè’s work was done; fire was necessary to make
way for the new crop. I have been ruminating upon this tower for millennia – once or twice in other lives I have even begun it, but it has always been torn down before it could do its work. I do not regret it; all those iterations have perfected it.’

The melan touched her toes and Sofia gasped. It was like wet ice enveloping her feet, so cold it burned.

‘Yes, it is breathtaking.’ The Apprentice was looking skywards. ‘The graceless age it ushers in will extinguish Man – oh, not at first. He will pine and gratefully fade away. This needle reaches as high into the air as it reaches down into the pit below, which even now is filling with pure water from the subterranean rivers. The great animal I am hunting knows my intent; it can smell how close I am. Truly, He is a jealous God. Man has chosen me, by a thousand admissions and compromises, and He would rather drown the world than lose His pet. I ask you, Handmaid: is that
love
?’

She remembered Ezra telling her why Abraham had been willing to sacrifice Isaac. The melan was clinging to her thighs now, making her shiver uncontrollably. ‘Better drowned by our Father than enslaved by you.’

‘You don’t know how right you are. That pain you’re feeling now? It is a mere
fraction
of my range. Tell me where Maestro Vanzetti has taken the child and I’ll end your suffering. You’re only brave because you don’t know how much I can make you suffer – but let me be plain, child: there is
no
limit. If it makes it easier, you should know that your boy was foreordained to die here. You tried to break free of the chains of necessity, but there never was any possibility of escape. Like all your species, you imagine you have free will – but if you are free, it is the freedom of the most infinitesimal drop of water in a torrent. Ah, but what misery you create for yourselves with that modicum of power.’

‘You’re no better—’ she started, but he cut her off contemptuously.

‘Ah, there you are wrong: I only
wear
this incompetent form. You shouldn’t have too much trouble with the concept; after all, you loved a creature pretending to be a man, didn’t you? And your boy – well, he’s something else entirely.’

‘You’ll never find him.’

‘Now you’re just being silly. Where can they hide him?’ he cackled. ‘Somewhere men are incorruptible? God made you imperfect in His image – poor thinkers, selfish lovers. Even now – admit it – your clenched fists still hold onto the memory of my grandson, or rather the buio that took Giovanni’s form. What do the minstrels say? True love is about letting go. But you take after your grasping, selfish Father. He seeks to drown me, but I will blind and poison Him. One eye of the needle scratches away the aether, the other has gone deep already. The melan is diffusing into the earth’s veins and arteries. The world is dying.’

‘And you will grow fat on its corpse like a worm.’

‘You think to insult me? If you could see my true form, you would fall down and worship.’

The melan had reached her neck. Its tendrils coiled over her skin like sentient ivy.

‘Not long now,’ he crowed. ‘Die and keep your secret. I’ve waited patiently through a thousand turns of the wheel – I can wait another day. As for you, this is your last turn. You finally get to lay down your burden, Handmaid. You should thank me.’

‘I do,’ Sofia cried with joy.

He stared at her, bemused – and suddenly doubt struck like a gut-punch. He wailed, ‘Why do you exalt so?’

‘Because I made a new Covenant. I am the Lamb, and I have lain freely upon your altar. Worm, thou art undone!’

Comprehension came at last. ‘No. No.
No!
’

‘Yes.’ Sofia closed her eyes tight as the melan bled into her. The pain was horrific, but she could bear it: she was going home.

Giovanni, wait for me. I’m coming
.

The melan discovered – too late – that it had crawled into a holy furnace, and it was consumed. And so was Sofia. Her shoulders sagged, her body gave up the ghost.

Deep beneath the mountain, chambers collapsed and stones began grinding together. The heavy stormclouds over the city were illuminated by sheets of lightning within.

The dancers in the Piazza dei Collegio ceased to hear any music and fell down, incapacitated by exhaustion. All those who loved the Contessa looked to Mount Nero and the divine storm that flashed about the mount.

In astonishment Bernoulli’s ghost relaxed his grip on his earthly vessel and Torbidda, waiting and watching, shattered the coffin binding him. If it had been an equal contest between the will of Bernoulli and Torbidda, then the latter
might
have triumphed, for he knew that he fought for more than flesh and that the chance would not come again – but Bernoulli was a vessel himself of the Darkness, that will that eternally contested with God, and so the outcome was preordained. Yet while the two spirits wrestled for the boy, his uncaptained body did a queer circular jig that left him standing on the edge of the steps.

His eyes sparked open to see Leto, conscious again and looking at him fearfully. ‘Leto, it’s
me
!’ Torbidda cried. ‘I can’t do it, his grip’s too strong. If you love me, Leto,
kill
me – do it
now
!’

Leto didn’t hesitate. He threw himself into his truest friend, striking him with his shoulder and taking him from his feet. He kept going, and pushed them both into empty space until they were falling together down the stairway they had both struggled so long and so hard to climb.

After a minute of shambling, cracking, rolling, falling, they came to rest: two broken dolls.

Thunder clapped and dropped earthbound in heavy sheets. One of the dolls shifted. It was not the wind’s doing. It shifted again, and then, like a tumbled house of cards rearranging itself,
it stood and once more ascended the steps. Those bones that were not shattered obeyed the commands that came from the commanding spirit, but the abused tendons and ligaments gave way before it reached the summit.

And above the foul crawling groaning thing came a flock of little shadows that leaped and danced over the stones of Monte Nero. The host of annunciators loosed by Pedro Vanzetti were drawn by the homing beacons atop the tripod. There were hundreds of them. Some failed before they reached the top, some collided and exploded into little metallic fires, some were plucked away by the winds, but most converged on their destination and there erupted. The upper ring of the tripod was silhouetted against the blast – and then the shredded halo caught fire.

As lumps of masonry crashed down onto the mount, what remained of the First Apprentice oozed over the final steps and pulled itself to the edge of the pool. Its head was facing behind, away from its chest, and it had to roll over like some alluvial fish. It regarded itself in the shiny glutinous tar and with a voice belched from inside, said, ‘I must be born and born again, and again—’

The body shuddered with a prolonged death-rattle and then sagged and was still – for a moment.

A bulge distended the throat. The cheek bulged. The jaw dropped open, as though the dead boy had remembered something of import. A long, wet and shiny thing emerged, too thick to be a tongue. Its brilliant white flesh was covered in a bloody mucus, like a newborn. It wriggled from the corpse’s mouth into the melan. As the storm gathered strength, it sank under the surface. Raindrops landing on the black liquid vanished in a hiss of vapour. After a few moments, the worm burst through the melan, shivering and throwing its coils around aimlessly. It resembled a flayed, limbless cat that did not know how to decently die. Even as
it writhed there, it grew at a fantastic rate. Great bulges engorged one segment, and others followed in spasmodic rhythm. The sheets of rain formed a barrage of caustic darts that punctured the pale membrane and it coiled itself against the base of the needle in agony. Even as it did so, its tail – or head, perhaps – slapped blindly against one of the tripod legs.

The abused leg went first, crumbling like lice-riddled wood, and with that crutch gone, the other two tumbled towards the centre, dropping all their weight on the weakened needle, which groaned like a wounded beast. The upper third cracked and bent, slowly at first.

The bloated white worm below was battered by that masonic rain until it was impaled by the falling spear. Its taut skin gave way and the bile that filled it spilled over the mountain. It died screaming from both ends – a strange reverberating sound that was heard miles away.

Indeed, it was heard in heaven.

*

In every nook of the dark white city men slowly uncovered their ears and eyes. They walked out into the pelting rain and let it wash them. Concord, for all its error, crimes and weakness, was reprieved. So was the race of men.

In the ruin that was left of the Piazza dei Collegio, Pedro Vanzetti felt the cold rain and knew that Sofia and Giovanni were one. It was not logical, but he had seen the limits of logic.

He held Iscanno aloft so that he could see Levi flaunt the Lion of Rasenna, along with all the other banners – Sybaritic, Salernitan, Akkan and Byzantine. He thought of the man who had woven it and of how parents bequeath more than life to their children. By their characters, good and ill, parents delineated the bounds of their lives as sharply as rivers shaped fallen rain. He prayed that Iscanno’s life would be ordinary, and that he would
be loved: not because his nature commanded it, but because that was the birthright of the children of this new world.

He had enough experience of miracles to know they were shy things, that change would overtake them so slowly that people would take the remade world – a world where love came easy – for granted. One day he would tell Iscanno how his mother had made it so.

‘Where are you going, Maestro Vanzetti?’ asked a bandieratoro who saw him briskly walking towards the Ponte Bernoulliana.

‘Rasenna. I have a bridge to rebuild.’

THE END

Thanks to my brother Michael Harte for subjecting himself to an early draft. Thanks to Fergal Haran, and Michael again, for advice on matters technical and for finding a vaguely believable basis in science for Aether, ice bridges and other mediaeval esoterica. If errors or improbabilities remain, that’s when I foolishly chose to ignore your council.

To all hands on the HMS Fletcher, to Nicola Budd who unravel all knots however complicated, answers all questions however inane and sees that I’m pointed in the right direction at conventions, to the new kid in the splendid jumper Andrew Turner, and to all the Quercus sales team who holler about The Wave Trilogy in a market where one needs to SHOUT, thanks.

Thanks to my agent Ian Drury for swooping
Irenicon
– back when it was still called
Drytown
– off the pile that is slushy. Thanks to my editor Jo Fletcher who’s had a rough year but never lets it show. Lazy readers make for lazy writers, but Jo is the type of attentive reader – severe and sympathetic as required – that brings out the best in me, and all the writers that come her way.

Aidan Harte 2013