Weaveworld

VI

THE FLESH IS WEAK

1

hough Shadwell had set his sights on occupying the Firmament – the only building in the Fugue worthy of one teetering on Godhood – once ensconced there he found it an unsettling residence. Each of the monarchs and matriarchs who’d occupied the place over the centuries had brought their own vision to its halls and ante-chambers, their one purpose to expand upon the previous occupant’s mysteries. The result was part labyrinth, part mystical ghost-train ride.

He was not the first Cuckoo to explore the Firmament’s miraculous corridors. Several members of Humankind had found their way into the palace down the years, and wandered there unchallenged by its makers, who had no desire to sour its tranquillity with hard words. Lost in its depths these lucky few had seen sights that they would take to their graves. A chamber in which the tiles on the walls had twice as many sides as a dice, and flipped forever over and over, each facet having its place in a fresco that never came to rest long enough for the eye to entirely comprehend it. Another room in which rain constantly fell, a warm spring night rain, and the floor gave off the smell of cooling pavements; and another which seemed at first quite plain, but was built with such sense-beguiling geometries a man might think his head swelled to fill it one moment, and the next be shrunk to the size of a beetle.

And after an hour, or a day, of trespassing amongst these wonders, some invisible guide would lead them to the door, and they’d emerge as if from a dream. Later they’d try to speak of what they’d seen, but a failure of memory and tongue usually conspired to reduce their attempts to babble. In desperation, many went back in search of that delirium. But the Firmament was a movable feast, and it had always flitted away.

Shadwell was the first Cuckoo, therefore, who walked those rapturous corridors and called them his own. It gave him no pleasure, however. That was perhaps its most elegant revenge on its unwelcome occupant.