Weaveworld (95 page)

‘I … remember you,’ he said.

The voice was faltering, and pained, but it was clearly that of Hobart, not his tenant. She glanced sideways at Shadwell, who was watching this encounter with bewilderment, then back at Hobart, catching sight, as she did so, of something flickering in the unsealed holes of his body. Her instinct was to step back, but he stopped her.

‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Don’t… leave me. It won’t harm you.’

‘You mean the Dragon?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The snow’s made it slow. It thinks it’s in the sand. Alone.’

Now the Scourge’s inactivity began to make some vague sense. Perched on the hill, surveying the wilderness of snow, it had lost its grip on the present. It was back in the void it had occupied for the millennium, where it waited for fresh instructions from its Maker. Shadwell was not that Maker. He was dust; human dust. It no longer heard him.

But it knew the smell of the Kind; it had howled as much from this very spot. And when the raptures failed – as soon they must – the wilderness would no longer keep it from its duty. Seeing them, it would do what it had come to do, not for Shadwell’s sake, but for its own. She had to get to it quickly.

‘Do you remember the book?’ she said to Hobart.

He took a moment to answer her. In the silence the furnace in his body brightened again. She began to fear that his words of comfort had been misplaced; that these two Law-givers were so much a part of each other that the breaking of one trance had alerted the other.

‘Tell me …’ she said. ‘The book …’

‘Oh yes,’ he told her, and with his recognition the light intensified. ‘We were there …’ he said, ‘… in the trees. You, and me, and –’

He stopped talking, and his face, which had been slack, suddenly contorted. There was panic there, as the fires rose
to the lips of his wounds. From the corner of her eyes she could see Shadwell stepping back slowly, as if from a ticking bomb. Her mind careered around for a delaying tactic, but none came.

Hobart was raising his broken hands to his face, and in the gesture she comprehended how they’d been destroyed. He’d tried to stymie the Scourge’s fire once before, and his flesh had been forfeit.

‘Burn her,’ she heard Shadwell mutter.

Then the fire began to come. It didn’t appear suddenly, as she’d expected, but oozed from the hurts he’d sustained, and from his nostrils, and mouth, and prick, and pores, running in fiery rivulets through which darts of the Angel’s intention ran, still slothful, but growing stronger. She’d lost the race.

Hobart was not quite beaten, however; he was making one last, gallant attempt to speak his mind. The chattering ceased as he forced his mouth open. But before he could utter a word Uriel ignited his spittle. Fire licked up across his face, the geometries behind it sharpening. Through the flames Suzanna saw Hobart’s eyes on her, and as their gaze met he threw back his head.

She knew the gesture, of old. He was offering her his throat.

‘Kill me and be done,’
the Dragon had said.

Hobart was demanding that same kindness now, in the only way left to him.

Kill me and be done.

In the book she’d hesitated, and lost her chance to fell her enemy. This time she wouldn’t falter.

She had the menstruum as a weapon, and as ever it knew her intention better than she did. Even as her thoughts embraced the notion of murder it was flying from her, crossing the space between her and Hobart in a silver instant and snatching hold of him.

His throat was offered, but it was not his throat it took, it was his heart. She felt the heat of his body fly back along the river into her head, and with it the rhythm of his life. His heart was beating in her grasp; she clasped it tight, no trace
of guilt touching her. He wanted death, and she had it to give: that was a fair exchange.

He shuddered. But his heart, for all its sins, was brave, and beat on.

Fire was coming from everywhere about him. He wept it, shat it, sweated it. She could smell her hair singeing; steam rose between them as the snow melted and was boiled away. The geometries were taking control of the fire now; shaping it, aiming it. Any moment, it would be upon her.

She gripped his heart tighter still, feeling it swell against her hold. Still beating, still beating.

Just as she thought it was beyond her, the muscle gave up its work, and stopped.

From somewhere in Hobart a noise rose which his lungs could not have made nor his mouth expelled. But she heard it clearly, and so did Shadwell: part sob, part sigh. It was his last word. The body in which she still had her mind’s fingers was dead before the sound had faded.

She began to call the menstruum out of him, but the Scourge caught its tail and an echo of the void came to meet her along the stream. She had a taste of its lunacy, and its pain, before she snatched her lethal strength back to her.

There was an empty moment, while steam rose and snow fell. Then the sometime Knight and Dragon Hobart fell dead at her feet.

‘What have you done?’ Shadwell said.

She wasn’t sure. Killed Hobart, certainly. But beyond that? The corpse face down in front of her showed no sign of occupancy; the fires from it were suddenly extinguished. Had Hobart’s death driven Uriel out of the man, or was it simply biding its time?

‘You killed him,’ Shadwell said.

‘Yes.’

‘How? Jesus … how?’

She was readying herself to resist him if he attacked, but it wasn’t murder in his look, it was disgust.

‘You’re one of the magicians, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘You’re here with them.’

‘I was,’ she told him. ‘But they’ve gone, Shadwell. You’ve missed your chance.’

‘You might trick me with your deceits,’ he said, his voice full of pretended innocence. ‘I’m only human. But you can’t hide from the Angel.’

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid. Like you.’

‘Afraid?’

‘It’s got nowhere to hide now,’ she reminded him, casting a look at Hobart’s corpse. ‘Won’t it need somebody? It’s either you or me, and I’m rotten with magic. You’re clean.’

For a fraction of a second Shadwell’s facade dropped, and she had her words confirmed; even amplified. He was not simply afraid; he was terrified.

‘It won’t touch me,’ he protested, his throat constricted. ‘I woke it. It owes me its life.’

‘Do you think it cares?’ she said. ‘Aren’t we all fodder to a thing like that?’

In the face of her questions his pretence to indifference failed him; he began to run his tongue over his lips, top then bottom, over and over.

‘You don’t want to die, do you?’ she said. ‘At least, not like
that.’

This time it was his glance that went to the body on the ground.

‘It wouldn’t
dare,’
he said. But he dropped his volume as he spoke, as though fearful it would hear him.

‘Help me,’ she said to him. ‘Together we might be able to control it.’

‘It’s not possible,’ he replied.

As he spoke the body in the warm mud between them burst into incandescent flames. This time there was nothing left for Uriel’s fire to devour but muscle and bone; Hobart had been stripped as naked as a man could get. The skin burst, blood boiling up in a hundred places. Suzanna stepped back to avoid being caught by the rain of heat, and in doing so put herself within Shadwell’s reach. He took hold of her, placing her body between him and the fire.

But the Scourge had already left Hobart, and had taken itself
into the hill. The ground began to shake, the din of grinding rock and pulped earth rising from beneath them.

Whatever Uriel had gone underground to devise Suzanna wanted to run from it while there was time, but Shadwell still had hold of her, and much as she wished to let the menstruum strike him down he was the only ally she had left. He it was who’d woken the beast, and been its companion. If anyone knew its weaknesses, he was the man.

The roaring in the ground climbed to a crescendo, and with it, the whole hill
tipped.
She heard Shadwell cry out, then he fell, taking Suzanna with him. His hold probably saved her life, for as they rolled down the slope the ground at the summit of Rayment’s Hill erupted.

Rock and frozen earth were carried skywards, then hailed down on their heads. She had no time to protect herself from its descent. She was still spitting snow from her mouth when something struck her on the back of the neck. She tried to keep hold of consciousness, but it slipped her, and she slid into the night behind her eyes.

2

Shadwell was still beside her when she came round, his hold on her so fierce it had deadened her arm from elbow to fingertip. At first she thought the blow she’d sustained had affected her sight, but it was a fog that had closed off the world around them; a cold, clinging fog that seemed to encompass the entire hill. Through it Shadwell watched her, his eyes two slits in his filthied face.

‘You’re alive –’ he said.

‘How long have we been here?’

‘A minute or two.’

‘Where’s the Scourge?’ she asked him.

He shook his head. ‘It’s not reasoning any more,’ he said. ‘Hobart was right. It doesn’t know where it is. You’ve got to help me –’

‘That’s why you stayed.’

‘ – or else we’ll neither of us get out of here alive.’

‘So how?’ she said.

He gave her a small, twitching smile.

‘Placate it.’ he said.

‘Again:
how?’

‘Give it what it wants. Give it the magicians.’

She laughed in his face.

‘Try again.’ she said.

‘It’s the only option. Once it’s got them it’ll be satisfied. It’ll leave us alone.’

‘I’m not going to give it anything.’

His grip strengthened. He crabbed his way through the muck to her side.

‘It’s going to find them anyway, sooner or later,’ he said. He was on the verge of sobbing like a baby. ‘There’s no chance they can survive this. But
we
can. If we can just make the bastards show themselves. It won’t want us once it’s got them. It’ll be satisfied.’ His face was inches away; every tic and tear was hers to scrutinize, ‘I know you hate me,’ he said, ‘I deserve it. So don’t do it for me, do it for yourself. I can make it worth your while.’ She looked at him with something close to awe, that even now he could bargain. ‘I’ve got stuff stashed away,’ he said. ‘A fortune. You name your price. It’s all yours. Whatever you want. Free, gratis and –’

He stopped.

‘Oh sweet Jesus,’ he said.

Somewhere in the fog, something had begun to howl: a rising wail which he recognized and feared. He seemed to decide that it was no use hoping she’d aid him, for he let her go and rose to his feet. The fog was equally dense on every side; it took him several seconds to elect an escape route. But once he had, he was away at a stumbling run, as the howl – which could only be Uriel – shook the hill.

Suzanna stood up, the fog and her aching head making the surroundings swim. The ground was so churned it was impossible to tell where the slope of the hill lay, so she couldn’t orient herself to get back to the wood. All she could do was run, as fast as possible, away from the howl, blood coursing
down the back of her neck. Twice she fell; twice her body made contact with an earth that seemed ready to open up beneath her.

She was on the verge of collapse when a figure loomed from the fog ahead of her, calling her name. It was Hamel.

‘I’m here – ’ she yelled to him, over the din of the Scourge. He was with her in seconds, leading her over the treacherous ground and back towards the wood.

3

Luck was on Shadwell’s side. Once he was away from the hill itself the fog thinned and he realized that either by instinct or accident he’d chosen the best direction to run in. The road was not far from here; he’d be away down it before the Angel had finished on the hill; away to some safe place on the other side of the globe where he could lick his wounds and put this whole horror out of his head.

He chanced a look over his shoulder. His blessed flight had already put a good distance between himself and the scene of devastation. The only sign of the Angel was the fog; and that still clung to the hill. He was safe.

He slowed his pace as he came within sight of the hedgerow which bounded the road; all he had to do now was follow it until he came to a gate. The snow was still falling, but his sudden turn of speed had got him heated; sweat was running down his back and chest. Even as he unbuttoned his coat, however, he realized the warmth was not self-generated. The snow was turning to slush beneath his feet, as heat rose from the ground, and with it, a sudden spring, shoots bursting from the earth and rising like snakes towards his face. As they flowered he realized the depth of his error. They came with fire for sap, these blossoms, and at their hearts were Uriel’s eyes, Uriel’s countless eyes.

He could go neither forward nor back; they were all around him. To his horror he heard the Angel’s voice in his head, as he had first heard it back in the
Rub al Khali.

Do I dare?

– it said, mocking his boast to Suzanna.

DO I DARE?

And then it was upon him.

One moment he was only himself. A man; a history.

The next he was pressed to the lid of his creaking skull as the Angel of Eden claimed him.

His last act as a man with a body he could call his own was to shriek.

4

‘Shadwell,’ she said.

‘No time to enjoy it,’ Hamel remarked grimly. ‘We’ve got to get back before they start to move out.’

‘Move out?’ she said. ‘No, we mustn’t do that. The Scourge is still here. It’s in the hill.’

‘No choice,’ Hamel replied. ‘The raptures are almost used up. See?’

They were within a few yards of the trees now, and there was indeed a smoky presence in the air; a hint of what was concealed behind the screen.

‘No strength left,’ Hamel said.

‘Any sign of Cal?’ she asked. ‘Or Nimrod?’

He gave a short, dismissive shake of the head. They were gone, his look said, and not worth fretting for.

She glanced back at the hill, hoping for some sign that contradicted him, but there was no movement. Fog still held court at the summit; the upturned earth around it was still.