Weaveworld (69 page)

Suzanna knew that what slim chance of mercy she’d won from the Incantatrix had been forfeited by Yolande’s attack: she would now leave none living amongst her sometime
captors. Without any time to formulate a defence, she threw the menstruum’s living glance towards the woman. Its power was minuscule beside that of Immacolata, but she’d dropped her guard after killing Yolande, and the blow found her vulnerable. Struck in the small of the back she was flung forward. It took her seconds only to regain her equilibrium however, and turn, still hovering like some perverse saint, towards her attacker. There was no fury in her face; only mild amusement.

‘Do you want to die?’ she asked.

‘No. Of course not.’

‘Didn’t I warn you how it would be, sister? Didn’t I tell you? All grief, I said. All loss. Is that how it is?’

Suzanna wasn’t entirely humouring the woman when she nodded her head. The Incantatrix made a long, soft sigh.

‘You made me remember,’ she said. ‘I thank you for that. And in return –’ She opened her hand, as if presenting some invisible gift ‘– your life.’ The hand became a fist. ‘And now, the debt’s paid.’

As she spoke she began to descend once more, until her feet were on solid ground.

‘There will come a time,’ she said, looking at the bodies in whose midst they stood, ‘when you will take comfort in the company of such as these. As I have. As I
do.’

Then she turned her back on Suzanna and started to walk away. Nobody made any move to challenge her as she climbed the rocks and disappeared from sight. The survivors just watched, and gave up a prayer to whichever deities they held dear that the woman from the wilderness had passed them by.

XIII

A FLEETING GLIMPSE

1

hadwell had not slept well; but then he supposed aspirant deities seldom did. With God-hood came a great burden of responsibility. Should he be so surprised then that his slumbers were uneasy?

Yet he’d known, from the time that he’d stood in the watchtower and studied the Mantle of the Gyre, that he had nothing to fear. He could feel the power hidden behind that cloud calling him by name, inviting him to step into its embrace, and be transformed.

A little before dawn however, as he was preparing to leave the Firmament, he was brought unsettling news: Hobart’s forces in Nonesuch had been decimated by raptures that had driven most of them to lunacy. Nor was Hobart entirely free of the taint. When he arrived, an hour after the messenger, the Inspector had about him the air of a man who wasn’t certain he could trust himself any longer.

From elsewhere, the news was better. Wherever the Prophet’s forces had faced the native population in natural warfare, they had triumphed. It was only when the soldiers had failed to strike swiftly that the Seerkind had found a window through which to work their raptures, and when they had, the results were the same as they’d been in Nonesuch: men had either lost their minds, or woken from their evangelical zeal and joined the enemy.

Now that enemy was gathering at the Narrow Bright, warned either by rumour or rapture that the Prophet was
intending to breach the Gyre, and prepared to defend its integrity to the death. There were several hundreds of them, but they scarcely constituted an army. They were, by all reports, an unarmed, unregimented collection of old men, women and children. The only problem they presented lay in the ethics of decimating them. But he’d decided, as his entourage left the Firmament for the Gyre, that such moral niceties were beneath him now. The greater crime by far would be to ignore the call he’d heard from beyond the Mantle.

When the moment came, as it soon would, he’d summon the by-blows, and let them devour the enemy, children and all. He would not shirk.

Godhood called, and he went, fleet-footed, to worship at his own altar.

2

The sense of physical and spiritual well-being Cal had felt when he woke on Venus Mountain did not falter as he and de Bono made their way down the slope towards the Firmament. But his fine mood was soon spoiled by the agitation in the landscape around them: a distressing, but unfixable, anxiety in every leaf and blade of grass. What shreds of bird-song there were sounded shrill; more alarms than music-making. Even the air buzzed around his head, as though for the first time he was alive to the news it carried.

Bad news no doubt. Yet there was not much of consequence to be seen. A few smouldering fires, little more, and even those signs of strife petered out as they approached the Firmament itself.

‘This is it?’ said Cal as de Bono led him through the trees towards a tall, but in truth quite unexceptional, building.

‘It is.’

All the doors stood open; there was neither sound nor movement from within. They quickly scrutinized the exterior,
searching for some sign of Shadwell’s occupancy, but there was none visible.

After one circuit, de Bono spoke what Cal had been thinking: ‘It’s no use us waiting out here. We have to go in.’

Hearts hammering, they climbed the steps and entered.

Cal had been told to expect the miraculous, and he wasn’t disappointed. Each room he put his head into showed him some new glory in tile and brick and paint. But that was all; only miracles.

‘There’s nobody here,’ said de Bono, when they’d made a complete search of the lower floor. ‘Shadwell’s gone.’

‘I’m going to try upstairs,’ Cal said.

They climbed the flight, and separated, for speed’s sake. At the end of one corridor Cal discovered a room whose walls were cunningly set with fragments of mirrors, reflecting the visitor in such a fashion that he seemed to see himself
behind
the walls, in some place of mist and shadow, peering out from between the bricks. That was strange enough; but by some further device – the method of which was beyond him – he seemed not to be alone in that other world, but sharing it with an assortment of animals – cats, monkeys and flying fish – all of which his reflection had apparently fathered, for they all had his face. He laughed to see it, and they all laughed with him, fish included.

Indeed it was not until his laughter died down that he heard de Bono summoning him, his shouts urgent. He left the room reluctantly, and went in search of the rope-dancer.

The call was coming from up a further flight of stairs.

‘I hear you,’ he yelled up to de Bono, and began to climb. The ascent was lengthy and steep, but delivered him into a room at the top of a watch-tower. Light poured through windows on every side, but the brightness couldn’t dissuade him that the room had seen horrors; and recently. Whatever it had witnessed, de Bono had worse to show him.

‘I’ve found Shadwell,’ he announced, beckoning Cal over.

‘Where?’

‘At the Narrow Bright.’

Cal peered through the window adjacent to de Bono.

‘Not that one.’ he was told. ‘This one brings it nearer.’

A telescopic window; and through it, a scene to make his pulse pick up its pace. Its backcloth: the seething Mantle cloud; its subject: massacre.

‘He’s going to breach the Gyre,’ de Bono said.

It clearly wasn’t just the conflict that had paled the youth; it was the thought of that act.

‘Why would he want to do that?’

‘He’s a Cuckoo isn’t he?’ came the reply. ‘What more reason does he need?’

‘Then we have to stop him,’ Cal said, ungluing his gaze from the window and heading back towards the stairs.

‘The battle’s already lost,’ de Bono replied.

‘I’m not going to stand and watch him occupy every damn inch of the Fugue. I’ll go in after him, if that’s what it takes.’

De Bono looked at Cal, a mixture of anger and despair on his face.

‘You
can’t.’
he said. ‘The Gyre’s forbidden territory, even to us. There are mysteries in there even Kind aren’t allowed to set eyes on.’

‘Shadwell’s going in.’

‘Exactly,’
said de Bono. ‘Shadwell’s going in. And you know what’ll happen? The Gyre will revolt. It’ll destroy itself.’

‘My God …’

‘And if it does, the Fugue comes apart at the seams.’

‘Then we stop him or we die.’

‘Why do Cuckoos always reduce everything to such simple choices?’

‘I don’t know. You’ve got me there. But while you’re thinking about it, here’s another one: are you coming or staying?’

‘Damn you, Mooney.”

‘You’re coming then?

XIV

THE NARROW BRIGHT

1

here were less than a dozen individuals from amongst Yolande’s rebel band who were firm enough of limb to make their way towards the Gyre. Suzanna went with them – Nimrod had requested that – though she told him in plain terms that any dream of overwhelming the enemy by force of arms was misbegotten. The enemy were many; they were few. The only hope remaining lay in her getting close to Shadwell, and dispatching him personally. If Nimrod’s people could clear her route to the Prophet they might yet do service; otherwise, she advised them to preserve themselves, in the hope that there’d be a life worth living tomorrow.

They got within about two hundred yards of the battle, the sound of shots, and shouts, and car-engines, deafeningly loud, when she had her first sight of Shadwell. He’d found himself a mount – a vast, vile monster that could only be one of the Magdalene’s children grown to a foul adulthood – and he was sitting astride its shoulders, surveying the battle.

‘He’s protected,’ said Nimrod at her side. There were beasts, human and less than human, circling the Prophet. ‘We’ll divert them as best we can.’

There’d been a moment, as they’d approached the Gyre, when Suzanna’s spirits had risen, despite the circumstance. Or perhaps because of it; because this confrontation promised to be the end-game – the war that would end all wars – after
which she’d have no more nights dreaming of loss. But the moment had passed quickly. Now all she felt – peering through the smoke at her enemy – was despondency.

It grew with every yard they covered. Wherever she looked, there were sights pitiful or nauseating. The struggle, it was clear, was already lost. The Gyre’s defendants had been outnumbered and outarmed. Most had been laid low; the corpses food for Shadwell’s creatures. The remnants, brave as they were, could not keep the Salesman from his prize any longer.