Weaveworld

XII

ONE FELL SWOOP

1

imrod’s brave talk was undercut by what she found at the camp. It was more like a hospital than a military establishment. Well over three quarters of the fifty or so soldiers, men and women, who were gathered in the shelter of the rocks, had sustained some wound or other. Some were still capable of fighting, but many were clearly at death’s door, tended with soft words in their failing minutes.

In one comer of the camp, out of sight of the dying, a dozen bodies were laid beneath make-shift shrouds. In another, a cache of captured armaments was being sorted through. It made a chilling display: machine-guns, flame-throwers, grenades. On this evidence Shadwell’s followers had come prepared to destroy their homeland if it resisted their deliverance. Against these horrors, and the zeal with which they were wielded, the profoundest raptures were a frail defence.

If Nimrod shared her doubts he chose not to show them, but talked ceaselessly of the previous night’s victories, as if to keep a telling silence at bay.

‘We even took prisoners,’ he boasted, leading Suzanna to a muddy pit amongst the boulders, where maybe a dozen captives sat, bound at ankles and wrists, guarded by a girl with a machine-gun. They were a forlorn mob. Some were wounded, all were distressed, weeping and muttering to themselves, as though Shadwell’s lies no longer blinded them and they were waking up to the iniquity of what they’d done. She pitied them in their self-contempt. She knew all too well the powers of beguilement Shadwell possessed – in her time she’d almost succumbed to them herself. These were his victims, not his allies; they’d been sold a lie they’d had no power to refuse. Now, disabused of his teachings, they were left to brood on the blood they’d spilt, and despair.

‘Has anybody talked with them?’ she asked Nimrod. ‘Maybe they’ve got some grasp of Shadwell’s weaknesses.’

‘The commander forbade it,’ said Nimrod. ‘They’re diseased.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ Suzanna replied, and climbed down into the pit with the prisoners. Several turned their troubled faces towards her; one, at the sight of a face that bore some sign of lenience, started to sob loudly.

‘I’m not here to accuse you,’ she told them. ‘I just want to talk with you.’

At her side a man with blood-caked features said:

‘Are they going to kill us?’

‘No,’ she told him. ‘Not if I can help it.’

‘What happened?’ another enquired, his voice slurred and dreamy: ‘Is the Prophet coming?’ Someone tried to shush him, but he rambled on. ‘He must come soon, mustn’t he? He must come, and take us into Capra’s hands.’

‘He isn’t coming,’ said Suzanna.

‘We know that,’ said the first prisoner. ‘At least most of us do. We’ve been cheated. He told us –’

‘I know what he told you,’ Suzanna said. ‘And I know how he cheated you. Now you’ve got to make good the damage, by helping me.’

‘You can’t overthrow him,’ the man said. ‘He’s got powers.’

‘Shut your mouth,’ said one nearby, who was clutching a rosary so tightly his knuckles looked ready to pop. ‘You mustn’t say anything against him. He hears.’

‘Let him hear,’ the other spat back. ‘Let him kill me if he chooses. I don’t care.’ He turned back to Suzanna: ‘He’s got demons with him. I’ve seen them. He feeds the dead to them.’

Nimrod, who was standing behind Suzanna listening to this evidence, now spoke up:

‘Demons?’ he said. ‘You’ve seen them?’

‘No,’ said the white-faced man.

‘I have,’ said another.

‘Describe them …’ Nimrod demanded.

It was surely the by-blows the man spoke of, Suzanna thought, grown to monstrous proportions. But as the man began to tell what he knew she was distracted by the sight of a prisoner she hadn’t previously noticed, squatting in the filthiest part of the compound, face turned to the rock. It was a woman, to judge by the hair that fell to the middle of her back, and she’d not been bound like the rest, simply left to grieve in the dirt.

Suzanna made her way through the captives towards her. As she approached she heard mutterings, and saw that the woman had her lips pressed to the stone, and was talking to it as if seeking comfort there. Her supplication faltered as Suzanna’s shadow fell on the rock, and she turned.

It took a heart-beat only for Suzanna to see beyond the dried blood and excrement on the face that now looked up towards her; it was Immacolata. On her maimed face was the look of a tragedian. Her eyes were swollen with tears, and brimming now with a fresh flood; her hair was unbraided and thick with mud. Her breasts were bared for all to see, and in every sinew there was a terrible bewilderment. Nothing of her former authority remained. She was a madwoman, squatting in her own shit.

Contrary feelings fought in Suzanna. Here, trembling before her, was the woman who’d murdered Mimi in her own bed; part architect of the calamities which had overtaken the Fugue. The power behind Shadwell’s throne, the source of countless deceits and sorrows; the Devil’s inspiration. Yet she could not feel for Immacolata the hatred she’d felt for Shadwell or Hobart. Was it because the Incantatrix had first given her access to the menstruum, albeit unwillingly; or was it that they were – as Immacolata had always claimed – somehow sisters? Might this, under other skies, have been her fate; to be lost and mad?

‘Don’t … look at … me,’ the woman said softly. There was no sign of recognition in her blood-shot eyes.

‘Do you know who you are?’ Suzanna asked her.

The woman’s expression didn’t change. After a few moments her answer came.

‘The rock knows,’ she said.

‘The rock?’

‘It’ll be sand soon. I told it so, because it’s true. It’ll be sand.’

Immacolata took her gaze off her questioner and began to stroke the rock with her open palm. She’d been doing this for some while, Suzanna now saw. There were streaks of blood on the stone, where she’d rubbed the skin from her palm as if attempting to erase the lines.

‘Why will it be sand?’ Suzanna asked.

‘It must come,’ said Immacolata. ‘I’ve seen it. The Scourge. It must come, and then we will all be sand.’ She stroked more furiously. ‘I told the rock.’

‘Will you tell me?’

Immacolata glanced round, and then back to the rock. For a little while Suzanna thought the woman had forgotten the questioner until the words came again, haltingly.

‘The Scourge must come,’ she said. ‘Even in its sleep, it knows.’ She stopped wounding her hand. ‘Sometimes it almost wakes,’ she said. ‘And when it does, we’ll all be sand …’

She laid her cheek against the bloodied rock, and made a low sobbing sound.

‘Where’s your sister?’ Suzanna said.

At this, the sobbing faltered.

‘Is she here?’

‘I have … no sisters,’ Immacolata said. There was no trace of doubt in her voice.

‘What about Shadwell? Do you remember Shadwell?’

‘My sisters are dead. All gone to sand. Everything. Gone to sand.’

The sobs began again, more mournful than ever.

‘What’s your interest in her?’ Nimrod, who’d been standing at Suzanna’s shoulder for several seconds, wanted to know. ‘She’s just another lunatic. We found her amongst the corpses. She was eating their eyes.’

‘Do you know who she is?’ Suzanna said. ‘Nimrod … that’s Immacolata.’

His face grew slack with shock.

‘Shadwell’s mistress. I swear it.’

‘You’re mistaken,’ he said.

‘She’s lost her mind, but I swear that’s who it is. I was face to face with her less than two days ago.’

‘So what’s happened to her?’

‘Shadwell, maybe …’

The name was echoed softly by the woman at the rock.

‘Whatever happened, she shouldn’t be here, not like this –’

‘You’d better come speak to the commander. You can tell it all to her.’